Lego Robots

Another thing I wanted to post about: a lego robotics workshop that I did with a mentoring program I was involved in called Discoveries Unlimited. Below is a picture of the robot my mentee and I worked on, which we named GIR (Great Intelligent Robot? Well, it something like that ;). It was a lot of fun and taught a lot of skills, such as following instructions (LOTS of them in the lego manual) and some computer programming to program the robots to do what you wanted it to do. I was amazed at how in one day, the 6th grade kids not only created robots that used light sensors, sound sensors and motion sensors, but they were able to program them to do specific tasks on a obstacle course. Being a programmer, I would never have thought we could get that far in the programming of anything complex. I thought it would take a lot to explain the concepts and the software. However, the kids caught on so quickly, it was amazing. They came up with a grand idea of something they wanted to do with their robot and they made it happen! One group even created robots to do a synchronized dance routine. Very impressive girls!