Binary Bot
dpgaiero
Entry ID #: 2473
Created: Tue, Jan 12, 2016 11:02 PM
Recently, our VEX team was invited to speak at a Pleasanton Math Circle (PMC) meeting. As guest lecturers, we taught the students about the importance of STEM and how an interest in math could lead to a career in one of these fields. By giving the students different instant challenges related to different engineering and math fields such as civil engineering and architecture, the students were able to develop teamwork, problem solving, and communication skills. Additionally, our VEX team created a binary bot, a robot made completely of VEX parts that takes a binary input and converts it into a specific action. After we built, programmed, and tested the robot, we took it to the meeting to teach the students there about binary. For the first part of our lesson we showed the students similarities and differences between the decimal and binary system. After familiarizing the students with binary we showed them how to convert decimal numbers to binary and vice versa using the Exploding Dots method. Once the students were sufficiently comfortable with binary we showed them how specific decimal numbers corresponded to different actions that the robot could do. For example, 10 would mean the robot would say "hi" in Morse Code with the flashlight sensor. However, the binary bot would only take binary inputs using the button sensors, so the students had to convert the decimal numbers into binary numbers to cause the robot to react. After playing around with the robot, we showed the students how we programmed the robot using RobotC in order demonstrate an application of binary that is used in the real world. The students really liked seeing how typing a command in RobotC translated into the robot physically moving.
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Recently, our VEX team was invited to speak at a Pleasanton Math Circle (PMC) meeting. As guest lecturers, we taught the students about the importance of STEM and how an interest in math could lead to a career in one of these fields. By giving the students different instant challenges related to different engineering and math fields such as civil engineering and architecture, the students were able to develop teamwork, problem solving, and communication skills. Additionally, our VEX team created a binary bot, a robot made completely of VEX parts that takes a binary input and converts it into a specific action. After we built, programmed, and tested the robot, we took it to the meeting to teach the students there about binary. For the first part of our lesson we showed the students similarities and differences between the decimal and binary system. After familiarizing the students with binary we showed them how to convert decimal numbers to binary and vice versa using the Exploding Dots method. Once the students were sufficiently comfortable with binary we showed them how specific decimal numbers corresponded to different actions that the robot could do. For example, 10 would mean the robot would say "hi" in Morse Code with the flashlight sensor. However, the binary bot would only take binary inputs using the button sensors, so the students had to convert the decimal numbers into binary numbers to cause the robot to react. After playing around with the robot, we showed the students how we programmed the robot using RobotC in order demonstrate an application of binary that is used in the real world. The students really liked seeing how typing a command in RobotC translated into the robot physically moving.
