It’s undeniable that moving the lego robot via the computer was a lot of fun. The purpose of this activity or experiment, was to understand computing different measurements while working with technology that is relevant to the field of sustainability and energy, as technology exploration will be of the utmost importance in the future. Each group constructed a robot out of lego based materials. We then used this robot to test measurements of distance and velocity compared to wheel circumference and wheel rotation.

   Represented below are two different data sets taken from the experiment performed with the lego robot. The experiment measured the distance the robot travelled in comparison with the wheels circumference, velocity, and number of wheel turns. The data is represented below in two data sets. Two different wheel diameters were used, one roughly .1619 m and one slightly larger. Unfortunately, the other diameter used was not recorded. The diameter or circumference of a vehicle or in this case, robot, is related to distance. In one wheel turn, the distance the robot has covered is equivalent to the circumference of the wheel. Larger circumferences compared to smaller ones, equate to larger distances if the same amount of power is used. Unfortunately, for our experiment, we did not change the power, which would have shown this correlation. I believe that if the power increased however, then the distance would also increase. The only circumstance in which an increase in power would result in a decrease in distance would be if the circumference of the wheels changed.  What is shown in the data, however, is that the greater number of wheel turns equal greater distances, based off of the computer measurements. For the first data set the three number of wheel turns were 1.51, 1.48, and 1.50. For 1.5,  the correlating distance was 26.45 cm. 1.48 rotations equated to 26.0 cm and for 1.50 rotations the distance was 26.25 cm. I was unsure however, which unit these wheel turns were measured in, however, the importance is, that the greater the rotation rate the greater the distance.  When the wheels of the robot were at 1.51 rotations, the most ground was covered. The same was true for data set 2. Another piece of data that should be pointed out is velocity. If you look at the sets of data, it appears that the velocity shares the same figures as distance. Velocity is a measure of the amount of distance covered (in meters) in a specific amount of time (seconds). Since both velocity and distance share the same numbers, this tells you that the robot was in motion for only 1 second. You can see, based on the data sets that all of the numbers correlate one way or another to each other, which I believe was a very important aspect of this lab; understanding the correlation in technology related measurements.

Another important feature of the data was the distance recorded by a human subject. After the robot ran its course for one second the distance was also measured directly with a ruler, which I must say was difficult in terms of accuracy.  In the second set of data, the human measurement was off by more than 2 cm each time, however, in the first set of data the measurements were closer in accuracy, however still off by a significant amount.  Computers will always be more accurate, because of a humans ability to make accurate measurements.

The experiment introduced basic technology and measurements in the hopes of familiarizing ourselves with technology that will be used in the future of sustainability and energy problems.