This folder includes grounding materials for an educational activity on simple vibration motor-based robots. This robotics outreach kit was designed to give users a sweeping experience in mechatronics with a relatively low barrier to entry, and at roughly a $20 per person price point. The experience includes circuit assembly, program installation, and program tinkering. Users can also play with the locations and types of feet in the robot assembly for additional mechanical/vibrations thinking experiences.
The hardware for this activity should be located at the RSS 2023 workshop! Two kits have been provided for test use by the workshop participants.
The bill of materials document, as further described below, includes links to all the parts needed to replicate this type of activity in your own work.
LoweringBarriersWorkshopApplication.pdf - this is my original proposal, as submitted to the RSS 2023 workshop. Please cite this as relevant, if you find these materials useful in your own future work.
OrientationSlideDeck - this slide deck was what we used to frame the kit activity. This initial grounding lasted roughly 30 minutes, and was meant to give a context for the work and high-level pointers for the coming activity.
GettingStartedWithArduino.pdf - this handout is meant to help users install the Arduino IDE and get started with programming the Trinket microcontroller included in the kit.
ActivityHelpPacket.pdf - this handout is meant to help with subsequent workshop steps. I will not be at the RSS workshop in person, so I am unsure of what state the robot assemblies will actually be in, but it should work as a rough guide for the activity regardless.
ExampleScuttlingRobotCode.ino - this is an example code you can load onto the robot to accomplish interesting scuttling behavior. With this simple of a robot, you will need to play with the patterns/levels of vibrations to accomplish what you want, but the end result can still be a playful robot.
WorkshopBOM - this was the purchase list we used to buy the workshop activity hardware in the past. It is enough to make 15 kits. The links are rather old, but most of them seem to still be active.
To date, this activity has only been used once, in an outreach workshop with older adults. Installing the Arduino software on the personal computers of attendees was a big challenge, but other parts of the activity were more successful. We found it useful to have multiple layers of backup plan, so that at minimum participants can have a working robot by the end of the activity.
If you use these materials/activities in the future, please attribute them to this workshop demonstration (see LoweringBarriersWorkshopApplication.pdf for more reference details).