Week 1: Day 3

Wednesday 6-13-12

Wonder how many of our students would get this one??

Continued to discuss lesson plan concepts.  Finalized concept of an autonomous rocket search robot.  This will be relevant to our students as several rockets locations are unknown after the Fredericksburg rocket launch event.  The reality could be that the this system is mounted on an “off-road” Segway or similar platform.  The system would require optics and image recognition that would recognize markings on a rocket and report its location to a base computer.  

In our classrooms we will introduce a logic flowchart with basic collision avoidance while traversing a regular shape.  The extension will include extending the flowchart to a “search grid” that will allow an entire area to be searched for a lost rocket.  Further extensions could include faults such as being stuck or low battery issues.

In order to effect this lesson, we began developing the flowchart for our University faculty partners.  We discussed the benefits/disadvantages of Elizabeth and I learning the specific coding and decided it was not a good use of our time.  The flowchart includes a search grid and obstacle avoidance at this time.

In the afternoon, we went to the Engineering Library here at Discovery Park for a library resource intro session.  A member of the staff walked us through how to utilize library resources such as online journals and ebooks, and how to request books from the main campus library.