Robotics with Ms Chowfin

My Robotics journey with Miss Chowfin has been about learning more of the different robots. The robots we got to use were Sphero, Ozobot and the Edison. As well as this, we learnt about the planet Mars and the characteristics a robot would have to have to function there.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and the furthest away of the rocky planets. It is commonly known as the “Red Planet” because of its rusty reddish colour. This is due to the high levels of oxidized iron in the ground. Mars, like Earth, has a molten Nickel and Iron core. But, for a reason that isn’t entirely understood, Mars doesn’t have a magnetosphere like Earth. This means that anything on the planet is susceptible to Solar Wind, the term for the ionizing radiation that is constantly emitted by the sun. Mars is also quite mountainous, and is home to the largest volcano ever discovered. One of the setbacks to life on mars is its lack of water. Because its a small planet, it lacks the gravitational force required to hold on to large amounts of water. Anything that is there is frozen and mostly beneath the ground because of how cold it is there. The reason it is cold is because of how far away it is from the sun. The main reason there aren’t as many people harvesting and mining with robots on Mars is because anywhere actually mine-able is basically just a bunch of basalt, an igneous rock that is volcanically formed. This is due to the high amount of volcanic activity on mars.

In the robotics class we used and tested three different robots. The Sphero was the first one we used, and was my personal favourite. It used a spherical plastic case with motors and gyroscopes inside to roll around when you controlled it with an Ipad. The second one we used was the Ozobot. We spent the least time with this one because we didn't think it would make a good Mars lander. Finally, we used the Edison. The Edison was the robot we used to build our Mars lander. We chose the Edison because of its modular design and large array of sensors. It was also very easy to program with a pre-meditated task with its online app. When building the Mars lander, we went through a long process of prototypes and discarded ideas. We went from paper to pipe cleaners and then eventually decided to use lego to build our lander. It was challenging and fun and in the end we had a functional self-designed robot.