First time robot building

Submitted by gucu on Sat, 07/25/2015 - 14:09

Forums:

Hi

I need some help please? I am setting up 3 projects for working with children one of which is a robot. I need to purchase the Pi and a kit to go with it. Can someone suggest a suitable kit that will enable them to do some simple construction (preferably no soldiering), and then some simple coding. I like the idea of a robot that will follow lines but can also be controlled by a TFT screen. A camera add-on to record the adventure would be great.

Our budget is £150.

Thanks.

Rich

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 07/27/2015 - 10:44

Hi Rich,

We might be able to point you in the right direction, it would help if we could find out a little more.

  1. Are you part of a school or college?
    Many places will do discounts or offer additional help for educational institutions, including us.
  2. What age group of children are we focused on?
    I ask because "simple" is fairly subjective, in particular a 6 year old will want something much more basic than a 12 year old.
  3. What sort of coding tasks did you have in mind?
    For example are we talking about writing a program from scratch, or taking a partly written script and finishing it to make the robot work.
    Also do you have a programming language you wish to use?
  4. What type of control did you want via the TFT?
    I ask because it may well be the case this will need to be coded by someone, GUIs are not often a particularly simple example.

gucu

Mon, 07/27/2015 - 11:58

Hi
Thanks for the reply. I am basically assembling the robot over the summer so that in September I can start some coding and robot projects with primary school students. The idea is to build a robot that can be programmed to perform tasks - follow a line, avoid an object, etc.
1. Yes/No. Initially I am getting things ready. A more detailed proposal will follow.
2. 7-11's
3. As above. Learn how to tell a robot to follow a line. Also if possible to control the robot using a tablet. Watch where it goes etc.
4. No I think the tft if probably not needed. It can be used to set up a media server or something like that. Control via a tablet and also vnc.

Thanks

Rich

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 07/27/2015 - 16:40

Hi Rich,

Given the change to the TFT / tablet requirement I think a DiddyBorg may actually fit the requirements you have.

One of the standard examples follows a red ball using the Raspberry Pi camera:

It should be possible to adapt the example to line follow, we would be willing to do this if you did want a DiddyBorg for this project.

The build instructions should be fairly simple to follow:
https://www.piborg.org/diddyborg/build
We have had success in the past with having a group of children assembling a single robot as a team.
The only soldering on this is for the motor connections, which could be done by someone else ahead of the assembly.

As for the tablet control we actually have a web-based control which is intended to run on a smart phone:
https://github.com/piborg/diddyborg-web
The same interface works well on a tablet, it also works with a desktop or laptop if needed.
When used with a smart phone or tablet you should be able to tether the WiFi to the device, allowing you to go anywhere.
Video of it in action on an android tablet:

We would be happy to look at extending the examples to help learning if we can.
One example that keeps coming up would be to add an intentional long delay between commands from the web UI and the movements of the robot.
This would be a great illustration of how difficult it is for the people over at NASA having to control the Mars rovers with the massive latency of the communications used.

Given this is an educational project I am sure we can work something out within your budget.
The best thing would be to drop us an email to discuss how many you would potentially need and what software would help the most.
If you could send us a message using our Sales contact form if you are interested and we and try and work something out.

jou.marttila@live.com's picture

jou.marttila@li...

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 08:22

Hi,

I have a bit similar case as what Rich had. 7-12yr old kids getting into robotics at school. The kids would first assemble the robot and then program it to do things. I tested the physical assembly part with my 8yr old daughter and a 4Borg and working together it went all fine. Raspberry was already pre-installed by me. Now, when it came to programming the movements with python, things got too complex.

The kids at school all have iPads and would be great, there was a graphical tool like Scratch to program the robot controls. That would allow younger and less experienced kids to get involved. Is there anything such available or under development? It seems that all of the schools here are looking for a suitable package.

Regards,

Jouni

piborg's picture

piborg

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 13:22

Unfortunately there is only a few methods currently available for programming the PicoBorg Reverse used on 4Borg:

None of these really solve your problem.

In the past getting boards to work with Scratch has been a bit of a pain, requiring people to install custom versions typically.
Because of this we decided to avoid confusing things further by making our own custom version.

Things have now changed though, it seems with Jessie the new version of Scratch has some proper in-built support for boards:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/a-new-version-of-scratch-for-raspberry-...

We would like to add some of our boards so they can be controlled with Scratch but nothing has been developed as yet.
Once things have calmed down after Christmas we will find some time to look into what needs to be done to add Scratch support to the PicoBorg Reverse so that both 4Borg and DiddyBorg can be controlled.

jou.marttila@live.com's picture

jou.marttila@li...

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 15:02

Sounds good. Please, drop me a note once there are some news.

I noticed that there is a remote control webui for DiddyBorg. Would this work also with 4Borg? This would be a good feature too to allow kids to have fun with their newly built robot.

The schools in Finland seem to be promoting robotics studies, even on lower grades. However, there is no good enough complete solution for kids. Your products look serious enough to be considered as real robots, but the SW part is too complicated for lower grades (some look for Lego Mindstorms, but they are, well.. Lego). Simple things would work. The webui remote control is ok, but something similar pre-programming movements and actions and pressing GO would be a good addition.

Regards,

Jouni

piborg's picture

piborg

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 15:18

The WebUI is available for the 4Borg on this page:
https://www.piborg.org/4borg/webui
It should work with most web browsers, phones, and tablets.

Programing a simple sequence using the same type of interface as the WebUI sounds like a great idea.
I guess it would function in a similar way to how the Big Trak does:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak#/media/File:Big_Trak_UK_Keypad.svg

jou.marttila@live.com's picture

jou.marttila@li...

Fri, 03/18/2016 - 17:07

Hi,

Any news about using Scratch with PicoBorg Reverse? I have now Scratch running on Jessie, but have not been able to tweak the motors to run.

Regards,

Jouni

piborg's picture

piborg

Mon, 03/21/2016 - 10:46

Unfortunately we have been really busy for the past few months and some things we want to do have been put on the back burner.
Scratch support for our boards falls in to this category.

In short we have not made any progress, but the intention is to look into Scratch properly when we get some free time to do so.

jou.marttila@live.com's picture

jou.marttila@li...

Mon, 03/21/2016 - 16:07

Ok, this is now blocking my educational robot project. The alternative is to use GPIO with ULN2003 chip, but that solution has its limitations compared with using Picoborg Reverse. I have to try that anyway, until there is a more advanced alternative.

Regards,

Jouni

jou.marttila@live.com's picture

jou.marttila@li...

Fri, 12/18/2015 - 18:02

Thanks, I will test the webui for 4Borg tomorrow.

The Big Trak sequential programming UI looks similar to what the 1st and 2nd grade kids now have, the Bee-bot https://www.bee-bot.us/. That and the steering UI would allow them to interact with the robot they (or higher grade kids) have assembled. Should be relatively straightforward to implement now that you already have the steering webui.

Regards,

Jouni

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