Smart Nation Goal - Robotics Kids

Date:  Jan 19, 2016

Programming is to learn how to solve problem.

I strongly believe that if the kids can learn how to solve problem thru Robotics, he should be able to solve problems in a structured manner.

Anyway the government wanted the nation to become a smart nation, so, kids will have to learn how to program from young.

So last school holidays, I sent him to two Robotics camp.

This is Kay Kay with his exoskeleton amor programming using the EV3.

Of course, he went to the camp together with his brother Jay Jay.

They learned how to do team work and build the rocket ship.

And all of them completed the Space Invention Camp.  This is Jay’s 3rd Space Camp.  And it is Kay’s first one.

Then, when we come back from our vacation, we sent both kids to Lego Vs. Minecraft Robotics Camp.

Kay Kay learned how to program the Wedo robotics kids from Lego.  He is still young and he needs to go thru sometime to learn the concepts of programming using the Wedo.  He looks very happy!

And his brother Jay will be programming the EV3.

And he completed the course.

All very happy learning how to program using Lego.

This year, I finally managed to sent Kay Kay to WondersWork Robotics class.

He is the one who ask for it.  And we let him learn.

He is actually learning Robotics lesson together with his brother Jay and Jay’s friend, Riyandi & Conrad.

This is his robot dancer project when the sensor detected movement, the arms will move.

Robotics - Flipper

Date:  Nov 1, 2015

It’s all about precision when you do engineering.

Sometimes you need to do the experiment, or test over and over again, to figure out what is wrong with the system.

One must understand the problem he needs to solve.  It this week class, very simple.  Jay Jay is asked to designed a flipper.  A robot that can use his arm to flip a rotating board.

Looks easy.  Just flip the black colour board.  

Sounds easy.  But it is the touch of the robot hand that needed to be precise.  First you must touch the board so it swing half way, and then, use another component servo to flip the board over.  You can's use strength, you can’t push it hard, the push has to be light.  Otherwise, the robotic hand will stuck there.

The code should be quite clean too.  All he needs to do is to figure out the timing, the angle, the force to push, the force to pull up and flip the board.

 

It’s fun seeing him doing this test over and over again, and you can see the young one start to get some frustrations.

That is normal.

Once must gone thru this in order to be calm, and think and be patience.

It turned the board half way, and it flipped the board by an inch.  Why?

Teacher Enzo is there to help.  And he come to the rescue too.

By moving the robot and slowly mimic the action Jay programmed, they finally figure out what kind of angle it needs to turn.

They also change a bit of the design so that it’s flipper can hook the bottom of the board and flip it.

 

Let’s get started to modify a bit.

After another 8-9 modifications.  Jay looked at me, point to his fitbit.  “Yes, you got all the time, don’t worry, I am enjoying watching here!"

And Jay continues another few tries.

and Finally.  Yeah.  Can go home liao.

Wait, teacher Enzo says must do the test 1-2 times more, so to see if the test result is consistent.

And here is the last test.  And it works as it planned.

Mission accomplished.

Sending him to Robotics I think is a correct thing. 

He loves learning how to program.  

It helps him to think.

It helps him to remember how to solve a problem.

And I think this kind of skill set will be very useful for him.

He has been in this Robotics class for almost 3 years.  At Wonder Works @ Liang Court 2nd Floor. 

Jay Jay & His Ozobot

Date:  Oct 8, 2015

This year, I gave Jay this birthday present.

In responding to LSL’s Smart Nation propaganda.

So, we need to teach kids how to do simple programming.

This is Ozobot.

It is a small little robot that will move.

It moves according to black lines and color coding.  You want it to move fast, you do a blue black blue black blue black line.  If you want it to turn right, make sure your line has blue-red-green in there.

It is quite cute.

It comes with these route cards to demonstrate what it can do.

You can also go to the website to download games and print it out.

At the moment, the Ozobot program is as simple as this.  You can re-program it using the Blockly app.

For kids at this age, don’t jump into that yet.

Let them understand using colour you can program the robots too.

You can make them do funny things too.  All simply by using color coding.

That is why you need the magic pen.  Or you can draw on the white board too.

You can play games from the printed sheet, and fill in the color to make it work.

Jay Jay explaining the robot.

Jay playing with his Ozobot.

He is so happy about it.

Very eager to explore too.

Happy Birthday Jay Jay!  Hope you like this present!

Jay Jay has been a very good kid for the past 1 year.  And he even not to forget to study his Chinese (daily reading and listening) on his birthday before sleep. 

That is why I top up with this.  Which I save S$88 when buying it from Malaysia.  

We finally have a Millennium Falcon at home.

Lego Stairs Climber

Date:  Sep 19, 2015

It is Saturday again.  Jay attends Robotics class every Saturday with his friend Riyandi.

This class teaches them how to use Lego Mindstorms to solve problem.

Let’s check it out how is their progress of learning robotics.

Wow!  They are treating it like their home.  Lying on the floor to program.  (no sleeping ya)

This week project is to climb the stairs.  And the stairs is these few stairs as shown below.

Sounds simple right?  

Well, this is a two weeks project.  Last week they failed.  Hahahaha  

This week, they seems to come up with a new design.

Last week, they build a robotic car that is powerful enough to climb one stairs and get stucked there.

So, teacher Enzo only flashed them with a video to prove that it can be done.  Perhaps a video of what they can do, and they have to build the robotic cars themselves without instructions.  I LIKE!

Think… Master Builder.

After they build the car, they will need to figure out how to program it.  Also modify and improve it.

See how much fun they have.  And how many times they have failed.  And they keep on learning to improve it.

Jay Jay slowly understand what is the problem he is facing.

OK.  Let’s see some actions.

This week, they added the climber wheels.  The figured that they need that climber wheels to pull the robot car up the stairs.

So, they need to figure out what to do, once they got on to one stair.

Riyandi one has a shorter climber wheels.  And why it got stuck?

So, that is the problem the kids have to fix.

 Jay’s one has a longer climber wheels but more unstable due to length. And notice that just below the EV3 module, there are two pieces of lego sticking out and that is obstructing the movement.  So, he has to redesign that so to make it smooth.

Almost there.  But keep repeating the actions as it failed to move up stairs #2.

By this time, there is only Jay Jay left in the class.  All the rest  have to go off because they have other activity.  So, Jay Jay gets all the attention from teacher Enzo.

But still he could not make it to the top stairs.  But his bot almost did it.

The reason is because the parts that holding the climber wheels are not strong enough.  So, that is why you see that it always bend a little, and that does not create the strength to pull the bot up.

So, Enzo passed him and let him go.  And he is so excited and explain to me what happen, etc etc.

The country wanted all the kids to learn programming and be a smart nation.

So, I guess Jay Jay should be fully prepare for it. 

This coming School holidays, I will teach him how to program an App.  :)

Fun At Robotics Class

Date:  Jan 18, 2015

Jay has been attending this Robotics class at http://www.wonderswork.com.sg since P1 until now. 

I think it is going to be hard to stop the lessons.

Wonders Work keep on surprising me without fail. 

Teacher Enzo keep coming out with teaching materials that grows together with the kids.

For example, this week, they design this motorbike car.  There are some new component in it.  Rubber band.

So after the car racing, they will take some time to go thru what they learned just now.

Energy.

Law of Conversion of Energy.

It is a simple motor bike design using the motor to store the energy in the rubber band, and then, the rubber band will make the wheels move.

So, they learned the conversation of energy.

To P3 kids, this is the first year they going to learn Science.  

Let’s see their motor car in action.

And it looks very fun.

So, I think I am going to let Jay Jay keep continue attending this Robotics course.  It will be good for him.

Jay Grew Up With Robotics

Date:  Dec 5, 2014

When the child is learning, they have amazing brain capacity to do creativity.

The child will learn extremely fast on things that they are interested in.

You have to give the opportunity to the child to learn things that they like.

You can influence the child, or set the stage for him to fell in love with some thing, but you got to give the child full decision making to decide what to learn.

You have to be patient.  Like Jay Jay, he is only 7 years old when he started learning Robotics (Lego Mindstorms).  

Do not expect immediate result.

Do not monitor it so clearly.  Like asking him what he learned every week.

Let him learn on his own pace.

Practice makes perfect.

By the time you want to evaluate what he has learned after 1-2 years later. 

You will be surprise how much he has learned.

Also, if you have siblings, keep the siblings near by.

Let them play together.

Yesterday, it was the first time I opened the EV3 box for Jay Jay.

So, he spent the day building the robot and testing the robot.

Meet the EV3 robot that Jay build.

Meet the robot crab target remote control he has build.  The EV3 robot will be program to target its marble gun towards the infra red of this robot crab.

Of course, he has all the tools to make the robots.

Here is the result.

At the same time, you also want to train his presentation skills.  :)

The EV3 robot will search and destroy the robot crab.

So, when you move the robot crab forward, the EV3 robot will move backwards so that it keep a fixed distance to fire the marbles at the robot.

If you move the robot crab backward, the EV3 robot will move forward.

If you move the robot crab to the left, the EV3 robot will align himself towards the new location of the robot crab.

Take a look at this video.  It is amazing.

He did all these all by himself.

But what amaze me the most is, he created this program by himself.

And according to what he told me, he tested it many many times to make it work.

And that is exactly how Wonderworks teacher taught him to do.

At first I thought, where or how did you download the sample program?

Jay said “What sample program?  I write the program myself."

So, I make him explain to me what the robot do.

And he can explain.

I was not at home when he does all these.

But I am extremely happy on what I saw.

And finally I can see the results of Wonderworks Robotics class that he has been attending every Saturday afternoon with his good friend Riandy.

When his brother came back...

He show it to Kay Kay.

He actually build this robot for Kay Kay, and promise to let him play when he come back from school.

He also use the old NXT bricks to build a robot with a marble gun.

And he teaching Kay Kay how to program.  Just a basic.  And Kay Kay listened.

This is the NXT robot.  Later he will attach the marble guns on it.

And there it goes.  

Why the boys are interested?

Robot fights.

Evil Jay Jay put the robot crab on top of Kay Kay’s NXT robot.  So that EV3 robot will always get aligned with NXT robot.  And they started to shoot marble at each other.

It was fun!

Then, you see Jay Jay busy running back to the room to improve his program.

Later he attached a motor fan on it to spin the fan blade.  hahahahaha

Very creative and very imaginative.

Thank you all the teachers at wonder works for teaching Jay.

I am sure to keep Jay with Wonderworks for many many terms in future.  To make him more expert in robotics play.

Recently he attend yet another Space Invention Camp.

85% of the materials are new.  

He got his second wing.

In this camp, they spent more times on Robotics.

This robot climbs the tape.

They learned to make paper plane shooter.  

Press a button, it shoots paper plane.

They also make electric tops.  Better than beyblades.

The build complicated robots too.

And they all have lots of fun at the space camp.