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Resources
There is a wide variety of robots that work well in student environments. The process of selecting a type of robot for a club will need to consider the age group targeted by the club, the amount of funds available and the skills that club members will need to acquire during the building, programming and testing process. In order to assist with this decision making process, I have organized some of the information I gathered before choosing the equipment for my club.
The table includes links to vendors and to specific robot pages. This will allow you to see what other offerings a vendor has or to get a quick look at the specific robot mentioned without wasting a lot of time searching the Internet. I have also listed that age group that I felt could be successful with this type of robot, the cost of an individual robot kit and my own personal rating for how much difficulty students would have working with this system. Higher numbers in the rate category indicate a more difficult systems.
| Age Group | Rate | Robot Name | Vendor | Features | Cost (USD) |
| 8+ | 2 | Lego Mindstorms | Lego, Inc | Easy to use Lego bricks that are compatable with the Lego sets students have at home. The RCX controller supports 2 motors and 4 sensors. Uses a simple graphical programming environment where students drag and drop program element icons. No direct programming required. Students will reach limits of this system quickly | $188.99 |
| 12+ | 7 | BoE BOT |
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Students will learn to wire up motors, sensors and other system components. Unit is programmed in the BASIC language. Excellent teaching resources (free from Parallax with over 400 pages of lessons) give step by step directions for both hardware and programming. All hardware components are plug and play and circuts are temporarily wires on a solderless breadboard. Students will not outgrow this systems ability quickly. | $199.99 |
| 12+ | 5 | MIT Handy Cricket | Gleason Research | This unit is very similar to the Lego RCX unit, but students will need to build their own sensors and wire their own motors | $59.00-$99.00 |
| 12+ | 6
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ER1 | Evoloution Robotics | This package is more expensive and requires a dedicated laptop computer. Provides students with a very sophisticated software platform that includes video image recognition, voice activated commands and 802.11 networking features through the laptop. The included modular hardware components allow for many designs to be created from this kit. | $299 and up |
| 12+ | 5 | VEX | Radio Shack, Inc | The VEX kit was designed after the FIRST robotics compitition parts box. There are a number of components, like an updated Erector set for robotics. Vex kits are new, but are considered by some to be the next step after Lego kits. | $299.00 |
| 14+ | 8 | PPRK | Acroname | The Palm Pilot Robot Kit (PPRK) is based on a Palm Pilot and programmed either in Basic or in C++. The PPRK is a kit and can be purchased with a variety of options. Students will need to assemble and program the robot. The documentation is not great for non programmers but acceptable if you plan to guide studnet through the processes. You will need to supply the Palm, which can be found cheaply on Ebay ($15.00) |
$325.00 |
| 8+ | 3 | Scribbler | Parallax | Scribbler is a pre-assembled robot package that is a great entry point for young students. If you want to focus on the programming aspects robotics, then this is a great tool. The robot is programmed with a graphical interface where students drag and drop program blocks to create a program. For those who remember the Logo programming language, this robot acts much like like the Turtle, with similar features. | $89.00 |
| 14+ | 8 | ARobot | Arrick,Inc | Like the BoE Bot, this robot uses the basic stamp microprecessor, programmed in BASIC, to control the robot. however, unlike the BoE Bot, ARobot requires students to build more systems from scratch and will require sodering. | $339.00 |
| 12+ | 4 | BYO Robot | McGraw-Hill Publishing | Build Your Own Robot is a book and CD set that comes with a pre-programmed PCB Board. The robot requires some minor assembly and the board has an upgradable expansion slot for a BASIC Stamp that will greatly increase the abilities of the standard board. This could be a good way to start out if your planning on developing a stepped program that evolves with the skills of your students | $49.99 |
For my club, I chose to use the Parallax Homework board and two Parallax Continuious Rotation servos because of the price and power. The boards can only be purchased in sets of 10 at $40.00 each, but it is possible to use these boards to complete all of the class material in the Parallax Stamps in the Class series with these boards. We will be purchasing additional parts like LEDs and sensors in bulk from AllElectronics.com, where we can get 100 LEDs for $7.00. This allows us to have lots of extra parts on hand with very little extra cost and we will be able to build BOE BOT analogs at about a quarter of the cost of the kit.
If your looking for a robotic compititon to attend or to enter your students in, the following table lists a number of regional and national compititions. These compititions are great places to get new ideas about building and programming robots. Students and teachers will both benefit from attending a compitition, even with out competing, because of all of the great information that can be gatherd just by observing the robots in action.
| National Robotics Challenge |
| First Robotics |
| Bot Ball |
| Robocup Jr. |
| Trinity Fire Fighting Compitition |
Copyright Chris Daman 2005. Created as part of P3 for EDT 644, Summer II, 2005.