Robotix Lab 5

Today I did an lab called Robotix. Our task was to create a robot that could pick up space rocks on Mars, store at least two rock samples, and move to collect the rocks. It had to have a way of picking up the rocks and it had to have a way to move. We were giving seemingly endless amounts of robotics tools like wheels, motors, connectors, and wires to power the motors.

We built a large robot that had five motors. One controlled the arm that picked up things (this motor was separate from the others). The other four motors were attached to the four wheels and plugged into the largest battery charge, they were controlled two at a time (the two on the left, and the two on the right). It was hard to control and took practice but it was very effective. We had a few trials, we started out by picking up small robotics pieces that were close to the starting position. As we gained confidence in how well we could control it we tried larger objects. The hardest trial we did we maneuvered around a few objects (by turning, or picking them up and moving them) then we got ourselves into the perfect position to get a large blue ball that was nearly too big to be picked up, but we got it!

I think this is important because we may need it for our Robotics mini Culmination and I am sure we will need it for Mission to Mars. I think it would be cool to try this same lab if we had harder standards. Like we had to use a certain piece, go a certain speed, pick up something that is this big. I think that lab would be harder and would challenge us to be more creative because in this lab we had a lot of creative power.