Last week we had our first real activity with the robots. The objective was to run there different trials where we would switch around the numbers of the power and time and measure how far our robots would go and the rotations it would make and then compare it to the distance the computer system gave us.
My Personal Experience:
I must admit, this activity was not as easy as I thought it would be. I went in to it thinking; “change the numbers, see how fast the robots go”. It wasn’t that easy. For starters, my partner and I had issues getting our robots to move, putting us a little behind on time. When we finally got it to move we then got stuck with the computer system which we both have never used. Once we started getting the hang of it, things ran a bit more smoother.
Trials:
This is the data that we came up with in our trials. Note that on trial 2 under time I have inserted a question mark (?), this is because I must of not taken down a number during class and being that my partner is out of town with a school club, I couldn’t get the actual number. The first chart, top, is the data that I chose and calculated and the second chart, bottom, is the computed calculations. The circumference of our wheel was 0.09.
With our data we realized that both power and time are very important. In the first trial we kept the power and time as the computer had it set, just to see how it would run and it was pretty smooth. I observed that in 3 seconds with the power at 75 the robot went pretty far. In the second and third trial we changed the power and time. When we lowered the power to 20 on trial 2 we saw how little the car actually moved, even down to the sound it made when it moved. It was very interesting to see.