Lesson 4 – Boe-Bots and Catapults, March 21st, 2015

This Saturday, Access Engineering had their fourth lesson of the semester, coming off a spring break for students and instructors alike. Some of the introductory sessions began working Boe-Bots, which are simple two-wheeled robots utilizing the Arduino system the students had begun working with the week before. Students created basic driving code and learned how to calibrate the servo drive values. They will be continuing to use these robots next week to make a robot that can follow a light source. The other introductory section continued their education in Java, learning about how to manipulate arrays and character strings. After their computer science lecture, the kids completed their 3-D printed catapults and competed against other teams to see which design was able to fire the furthest. From furthest to shortest, the scores for the teams are as follows:

The Winners 20’
Team SiCK 14’ 6”
Little Einstein’s 7’ 8”
Undefined 6’ 0”
Polymerase Chain Reaction 3’ 10”
F.D.D.C.O.D. 2’ 4.5”

The advanced section worked on designing a Boe-Bot, which they will code to be controlled with a small joystick. They will continue to be designing these parts in the coming weeks to finish the project by the end of the semester.