Learning and destruction collide in epic battle bots’ project

By Jeff Cochrane, Waihi College

Together with the engineering teacher here at Waihi College, we co-taught a group of Year 10s to develop battle robots. It was an awesome mashup of both coding and robotics.

We’d always been tinkering with various project ideas. We sat down together one afternoon and Ray said: “Hey did you see that robot battle show on Netflix?” The idea was born and we couldn’t stop ourselves.

To be honest it started as a full 100+ kg battle bots of destruction with chainsaws for motors … but we both had to temper our ambitions due to health and safety concerns. We decided to limit the weight and power to maintain some degree of control, and wrote some basic rules and regulations before pretty much turning the project over to the students.

Weapons and armour

Their brief was ‘Design and build a competition-winning termite class battle bot’. They were provided with a range of basic parts from the Arduino, wheels and Bluetooth controllers for movement but then they could take their design any way they liked, within the scope of the rules (including, max weight 1kg, no metal, water or fire-based weapons).

Teams used the laser cutter to craft their bot’s armour, weapons and chassis. For the coding part of the process, we used PictoBlox, an open source drag-and-drop style coding app. I knew many of my students had never been exposed to coding before and seeing lines of code would turn them off. We looked at a number of different platforms, like Sphero and Scratch, but these didn’t meet the robotics and coding requirements. I’m pretty sure I just stumbled upon PictoBlox while looking at Bluetooth-controlled cars on YouTube.

It’s been great as it not only had the Scratch-style computer programming many of the students had used before but also showed the actual C++ code the scratch had generated.

Critical decisions

Seeing the battle at the end of the project was amazing. We had setup a ‘pit’ (ring of tables) where the battle bots would compete. One side was for the competitors, the remaining three were filled with students eager to see the action. The crowd was cheering; parts were flying. It was just an epic way to finish a project.

We may have provided the basics but they had to bring their creativity to develop their bots. The technology process, problem-solving, and teamwork were the key learning outcomes for the students. Teams had to design, test, re-design, refine and test again their various bots, weapons, and parts. From 3D printed weapons to the difference between two and four-wheel drive, students had to make critical decisions as a team to move their project forward. Problem-solving was a massive part of the project, from debugging the wiring and coding or refining the designs, students were in a constant state of flux.

Learned so much

The ease of the coding system was a huge help as it was easy enough for students to access the coding, understand what each step/piece of code did and then make changes as they developed their robots.

It was pretty technical for sure. There were lots of issues getting the right Bluetooth settings and making sure the wiring was correct but, again, I think that the students just learned so much. Some of the teams were five and more, and too big. Groups of two or three would have been better. The start of the project was plagued with super technical issues but once these were resolved, it was all go. Overall, it was a blast, not just for me but the students really enjoyed it. There are a few images displayed in my classroom. One is Oreo, the winning robot, sitting atop a pile of defeated challengers, which serves as a reminder for all students who enter the battle bot arena.

We’re planning the next phase, which with a little more time, smaller team sizes and more weight and power, I think will be epic!

Jeff Cochrane teaches Digital Technology at Waihi College in Waikato.

For more on PictoBlox go to thestempedia.com/ product/pictoblox/