Summer FSH innovative projects "Creating the Future": how it was
Good afternoon, dear residents of Habr!
It is summer now, it is time for vacations and a time for relaxing on the beach, but we were
1. Introduction (it is a historical reference).
On June 26, 1999, the First President of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Mikhail Efimovich Nikolayev, issued a decree on the organization of the Physics and Mathematics Forum "Lensky Krai" in the village of Oktemtsy of the Khangalassky Ulus. technical personnel who are ready in their professional activities to protect the interests and ensure the sustainable development of the Arctic. Since then, the Forum has been conducting year-round work for 15 years already, gathering under its roof students, students, teachers, scientists from all over the republic and many other regions of the country (including even from Moscow). Initially, the Forum was organized in a wooden building, more resembling an ordinary rural school than a forum of republican significance. However, after a rather short time (3 years), modern residential and educational buildings were rebuilt. Currently, the Forum is located on an equipped area that includes a residential complex in which the forum participants live, a two-storey academic building with lecture classes and laboratories equipped with modern equipment, as well as the Museum of the First President of the Sakha Republic - M.Ye.
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View of the building
The mode of the Forum is year-round. In winter and summer - schools for gifted children, lasting, on average, a couple of weeks. The rest of the time is holding various Olympiads, scientific and technical competitions, as well as internships for both schoolchildren and students, and for teachers from all over the country. As the teaching staff are invited from the best universities of our country, experts in various fields. The main areas in which the Forum operates are physics, mathematics, chemistry, computer science and robotics. Within these areas, students take courses in-depth study of physics and mathematics, master the technique of digital measurements, collect robots, and even launch their own satellites. The participants of this forum often become winners and prize-winners in various physics and mathematics competitions, as well as competitions in robotics, both on a national and international scale. This Forum is the pride of the Republic of Sakha and the main scientific and educational center of republican significance.
2. Who are “We” and how we were among those invited.
We are graduates and employees of MSTU. N.E. Bauman from the faculty of "Robotics and integrated automation", and specifically the departments of PK9 and, in the already disbanded and merged with another department, RC10. In total there were three of us — two development engineers and our leader — the organizer. Currently, we are employees of various organizations (including MSTU named after NE Bauman), but all of us are united by a love for robotics and the design of all sorts of interesting pieces. It is for this reason that we are often engaged in the implementation of various non-trivial projects, and we also share our knowledge and skills with schoolchildren and we accepted the invitation to attend the summer physics and mathematics school not only because we have to work not only in a new format for us, but also because for us, spoiled and settled in urbanized Moscow, the trip to Yakutia promised to be very exotic. And the exotic was not long in coming.
3. Here it is not for you here!
Having passed through all the points of torment in Sheremetyevo, we finally saw what should become our fulcrum for the next six and a half hours. The number of people climbing the ladder did not correlate with the size of the iron “bird”. However, I thought. And no mistake. Having enjoyed in full the sensations like “herring in a bank” after 6000 kilometers, we nevertheless landed successfully. While we were taken to the location of the Forum, we managed to look a bit at Yakutsk. Immediately, the contrast is striking: modern sleeping areas are interspersed with private sectors with lop-sided houses and cows peacefully grazing next to them. Wherever you look - there is a construction going everywhere. Houses, shops, office buildings are being built. I did not see such rates of construction anywhere. Well, it seems that one of the most frequently encountered cars on the road is KAMAZ trucks. The remaining 2 largest parts - our legendary all-terrain vehicles - UAZ (loaf) and mostly right-handed "Toyota." But. The roads that we saw deserve special attention. I have not seen such broken roads even in the provinces. Sometimes on these roads even met asphalt. But even such difficulties did not stop us, and, having experienced all our insides and having beaten off the chopping place, we still reached our destination and fell to sleep so that we could be cheerful and cheerful by evening. Naive Moscow guys. Despite the fact that we were morally reconciled with a difference of 6 hours to the usual time zone, our organisms stubbornly did not want to be reconciled and as a result we enjoyed all the delights of the consequences of acclimatization. It was getting dark ...
4. Working hours - from dawn to dawn.
On average, officially, the time to give lectures and to conduct practical classes with schoolchildren was 3.5 - 5 hours a day, but who would be able to resist in their spare time not tinkering with robotic sets? Therefore, all the time we have except sleep (6-7 hours) and lunch (war-war, and lunch on schedule) we spent in the location of the educational building, doing, in addition to preparing for classes - a more detailed study of the sets and mastering of them any fun pieces In general, the organism, accustomed to night vigils, did not strongly resist such a regime, but there was one big problem that we didn’t foresee by our inexperience - it’s the white nights ... And we had to put up with it ... But we didn’t regret it - where else will we have at our disposal a large number of robotic kits ranging from the already scored LEGO ending with such exotic as DaNI? And besides that, there were Bioloid Premium and Bioloid Stem, the “iron” VEX and VEXiQ ... And after all, they were far from being in a single copy ... I did not see this level of technical equipment anywhere else. Even in Moscow, only a few can boast of having at least a few robotic kits of this level. But besides robotics, they are still engaged in physics and chemistry - these are full-fledged digital measurement laboratories equipped with LabQuest laboratory measuring stations with a large set of Vernier sensors. Here, the issue of education of the younger generation is taken very seriously.
5. Workflow - a view from the inside.
In total, 100 schoolchildren from the 5th to the 11th grade attended the summer school. Before they got here, they passed a serious selection in their schools, so the level of all children was about equally high, but, of course, interests and skills differed. At the beginning of the school, survey lectures were conducted by the leaders of all available areas and the children could choose where to engage in their project activities. Protecting your own project was the main condition for studying at this school, and therefore the schoolchildren were given every opportunity for their own creativity. In addition to the main areas of physics and mathematics, students chose from robotics (LEGO, DaNI, VEX and Bioloid), applied physics, 3D modeling, graphics, and the English language. Separately, I would like to mention the direction of CanSat - we had a chance to meet, and schoolchildren - to learn from the winners of the Russian championship in CanSat - the Yakut team "Cholbon". Let us return to our direction. On the second day of the school, we gave lectures to the entire audience on the basics of prototyping robotic systems, and also told about each available area within the framework of robotics. As a result, a total of 43 people signed up for robotics, of which 18 people signed up for VEX, 9 people signed up for Bioloid, and the rest for LEGO - mostly everyone who is 7th grade and younger, as well as those who had been involved in LEGO for a long time and participated in championships. Good performance. According to the data I have, the rest of the directions were as follows: 5 out of 23 people enrolled in applied physics, 7 people enrolled in CanSat, and the rest in 3D modeling. The remaining students were distributed between mathematics, graphics and English (mostly undergraduates). I was responsible for the direction of Bioloid and therefore I will continue to rely mainly on the indicators of my group. Of the nine people, I had one seventh grader (who later turned out to be very sensible in programming) four ninth-graders and four tenth-graders. Overall, not bad.
Exotics from National Instruments - DaNI robotic kit. A distinctive feature is the presence of a real-time controller on board.
The learning process was built as follows - from 9.30 to 11.00 a lecture for all who chose robotics. From 11.00 to 11.30 a break, and then until 13.00 the continuation of the lecture. Most of the lectures were devoted to the history of robotics, its current state, and at the end several kinematic problems were disassembled and solved, which undoubtedly was very useful for those who developed robots with manipulators. After lunch, from 14.30 to 18.00, the project work began - the guys dispersed in their classrooms and each engaged in their own robots. Since we had only a few days to implement the project, the guys united in groups of 3-4 people, but there were those who carried out their projects alone.
5.1 Group "Bioloid"
Initially, I was not very lucky with my group - only one of the students present had the experience of assembling a humanoid robot from the Bioloid Premium kit. Nobody dealt with programming. It was very sad and pichal, so I had to spend 2 days explaining the basics - how to build Bioloid assemblies and how to program them in the RoboPlus Task environment (I chose the standard programming environment, because we just have time to learn C programming did not have). I also had a student who chose a project to develop a Bioloid management model for ZigBee using LabView, so I had to give an additional lecture on the basics of development in LabView. In my group, I required the implementation of my ideas and the assembly of layouts, which are not in the guidelines for designers. At first it even seemed to me that we would not be able to do anything serious, but I was greatly mistaken. On the third day, the guys felt the theme, offered their ideas, and the work began to boil. For 4 days, they not only managed to assemble the layout of their robot, but also develop a 3D model of their layout in the R + Design environment, write a program in the RoboPlus Task environment, test the layout, refine it, make a presentation and protect their project in front of the entire forum. They have done a great job. In my group, the guys were divided into 3 groups (4 + 4 + 1) and, accordingly, prepared 3 projects:
1. Service home robot with sound control system.
2. Autonomous manipulator on a movable chassis.
3. Robot-researcher with remote control via ZigBee channel.
The results, in my opinion, are amazing:
1. Service home robot with sound control system.
The robot responds to the sound and, depending on the command received, moves around the territory and brings the desired item. (A bunch of 5 batteries is used to balance the robot). The design includes 8 servo drives dynamixel ax12a.
2. Autonomous manipulator on a movable chassis.
The robot performs complex movements when transferring objects, is able to pour soda into a glass, as well as open the box that is behind it and put things there. The design includes 12 servo drives dynamixel ax12a. (The photo in the picture is somewhat different from the final version)
3. Robot-researcher with remote control via ZigBee channel.
The layout itself is very simple - a regular machine on two servo drives of dynamixel ax12w, but the main “chip” is data exchange with a PC via two radio channels - ZigBee and WiFi. The program developed on LabView allows you to control the robot by specifying the destination point. The robot itself determines the route, after which it moves, simultaneously transmitting the video image via Wi-Fi. The camera was an improvised tool - iPhone 5.
5.2 Group "VEX"
The group dealing with the designers of VEX and VEXiQ was mainly registered by the 9th-11th graders. It is understandable - to work with competitive level sets, you need not only desire, but also the ability to program (for programming VEXs, the RobotC environment was used) and to assemble complex mock robots. I also wanted to note the fact that many children came with their own projects, which they developed and developed within the school. Compared with the group “Bioloid” in this group, the initial level of preparation of children was higher, which resulted in better quality and a greater number of completed projects.
5.3 LEGO Group
Conventionally, we called this group “LEGO”, but in fact in this group we were engaged not only in LEGO designers, but also in DaNI.
In terms of age, this group turned out to be the youngest - the youngest participants finished only the 4th grade (in the photo, the group is not fully). But despite the young age, the guys with the originality and complexity of their layouts without much straining “gave a light” to their comrades from the “VEX” and “Bioloid” groups.
5.4 Applied Physics Group
As part of the work of this group, original projects were carried out, such as “Dynamo-door as an alternative source of electricity”, “Compact underwater turbine”, “Heat pump in the north”, etc. With their projects in this group, the guys not only demonstrated their skills and abilities in solving complex problems, but also showed a high awareness of the relevance of the work performed, mainly in relation to their region. In my opinion, this group from the groups involved in robotics was distinguished not only by the deep degree of study of the material (many of the presentations had a decent level of research to justify the relevance of the work), but also the originality of the proposed structures.
5.5 Group "3D modeling"
This group was the smallest, but it did not affect the results shown. In the process, the guys got acquainted with the environment Compass-3D, and as a result were able to fully simulate the satellite CanSat, which was developed in parallel by another group.
5.6. Group "Innovative Offers"
Formally, we did not have such a group, but I decided to single out the remaining projects that are hard to bring under one of the existing groups, but differing in originality and relevance. As part of the work of this group, the children completed such projects as the “New look of the village”, offering options for improving their native places, as well as the “Interactive map of the industrial places of Yakutia”, collecting in one application information about all the industrial enterprises in the region and presenting all this in the form of a card.
6. And what is all over?
Upon completion of the school, a 2-day marofon was held on the presentation of their projects. On the first day a conference was organized - the guys presented their projects to audiences and the jury, which assessed not only the relevance of the work put and the tasks solved during the work, but also the quality of the presentation and the ability to protect their projects. Most groups represented only one participant, but there were also those who smashed their performance and made it possible for all participants to speak. Taking into account the fact that the time of the speech was limited, the option “give to tell everyone” was not always successful.
On the second day, an exhibition of working mock-ups created during the project was organized. Located on two floors of the academic building, the guys showed the results of their work to everyone and the jury. The complexity, originality and reliability of the structure was evaluated at the exhibition. Attention was also drawn to the process of the demonstration itself. Places were distributed as follows - in two nominations: robotics and physics (all that was not included in the direction of robotics) was separately evaluated conference and exhibition. A separate column in these two nominations was the choice of the audience - everyone could vote for their favorite project during the exhibition.
CanSat'chiki
Transport handling robot with remote control
Amphibian Research Platform and Wheeled Robot Researcher.
Tracked scout robot
Intrashop transport robot
Robot Sapper and Robot Garbage Sorter
The team of the youngest participants with a whole fleet of robots called “The director himself. Haymaking. Rise of the Machines"
After the exhibition, the winners were awarded and the school closed solemnly.
7. Conclusion
Despite the difficult schedule, rather tight Real-Time and other difficulties that we encountered we managed to organize and bring to the result a large number of projects. The experience gained as a result of this work is important both for us, the teachers, and for the children, who will soon enroll in universities and engage in their own scientific activities. Remembering my school years, I want to mourn only one thing - why we did not have such opportunities. We hope that our work has not been in vain - and many guys will continue to pursue their projects further, and maybe we will meet with them more than once. I would also like to thank the organizers of the Forum for their dedicated work and wish them success in their activities. Well, we only have one thing to do - to return to Moscow and start mentally preparing for the next school, which, I hope, will definitely take place!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/231191/
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