Watch the Video Here: Spinning Robot

Contrary to popular belief, Robots can sing and dance. Today in class i programed my little robot explorer to chime the G E C of the NBC theme song while spinning in circles. While it may not solve world problems, we have made progress in programing little devices for our personal enjoyment.

While they ARE fun to watch, it is also educational. Measuring the circumference of the wheel, we are able to input the measurement (.173) into the program to help determine the distance traveled, rotation of the wheels, and velocity of the vehicle. By measuring the vehicle distance with a ruler and looking at the measurments determined by the program, we are able to determine the error between the program and human measuements.

Running the car for 1 second, the program determiend the the distance traveled to be .253733 meters and the number of wheel turns to be 1.46667 rotations. Measuring the distance with the ruler, i dermined the actual distance traveled to be .27 meters. This would create an error of 6.2 percent. By calulating the distance traveled by hand, i used the diameter of the wheel (5.5cm) x pi (3.14) x the calculated number of wheel turns (1.46667) to determine that the car should have traveled .25329 meters, very close to the calulated .253733 meters. The program calulated an error of .17 percent. This, most likely, was caused by human error in calculating the diamater of the wheel.

While the little robot may not look like much, it can teach us a great deal about movement and motion. By running a simple program, we were able to calculate distance, wheel rotations, and an average velocity of .25 meters per second. By using tools such as these, it creates a great way for students to learn about motion hands on and use real world examples to practice calculations.