Robotics and Programming

In my Robotics and Programming class, I am learning how to use my programming knowledge to design my Mars Lander.

DESIGN PROCESS

For the brainstorm section of the design process we put forward our design ideas that we had individually thought out and designed. Then we tested out the sphero and figured out how it worked and how we could incorporate it into our designs so it makes a Mars Lander. Once we finished testing out the sphero we went on a site called the Mars Lab. On this site there were three different landers that we could drive online. We had an online tutorial on how to make them move and how to pan their cameras. The first one was called the MAMMOTH. It had four hydraulic legs that stretched out quite far. It had a tiny camera that worked relatively well. This rover was probably one of my least favourite because it was so big and didn’t get over the rocks that well. It also didn’t have any renewable energy source or storage. This made it bad for the atmosphere on mars and couldn’t carry anything if you were controlling it from say a rocket. The second one we used was called the MAWSON. This was my favourite out of the three that we got to choose from. Instead of four wheels like the MAMMOTH it had six. Although the legs weren't hydraulic they had better grip and stability. The camera was bigger and clearer and was easier to control and it actually had some storage. My favourite thing about this lander was the solar panels that it had on its back. This meant that it had a renewable energy source and would be able to go for a longer time that the MAMMOTH. The third and final rover was called the CONTINUUM. This was the one that was in the middle for me. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it as much as I liked the MAWSON. It had a glass backing for storage this means that it could be shattered easily if say a dust storm swept up and took a few rocks with it. This rover had six wheels like the MAWSON but they were very stubborn and did not look like they would be moved easily without taking the whole thing apart. The camera was on a movable arm that could basically point in any direction and it also had a few pockets of storage. It had a source of energy like the MAMMOTH but the rest of it makes up for it being the second best. These helped me form ideas for my own rover that we have to make.

My design would be a mixture of all three of the rovers. It would have six wheels and they would be hydraulic. The tires on them would be thick and sturdy enough to go over big rocks and wouldn’t break. It would have a camera like the CONTINUUM so you can see everything. It would have storage like the MAWSON and CONTINUUM combined. It would have the energy source of the MAWSON because I would like it so it does not hurt the atmosphere of the planet mars. Then it could have some additional features. A grabber if you find something interesting that you would want to research or say a light so that you could see what you are researching.

Here is a video of my mars lander that I created on Tinkedcad and below that is the image of the one we made in real life out of LEGO.

MARS

Mars terrain is, dusty, rocky and quite like a desert. Mars rusty dust is because of the iron-rich materials in the small rock that litter the surface of mars. The cold thin atmosphere means that liquid water will not stay on the surface for a long time. Craters are aplenty on mars. This means a constant risk for the rovers of falling into them and them smashing. The red planet is also home to the biggest volcano and the biggest valley in our solar system. The mountain (Olympus Mons) is about 3 times the size of Mt Everest and the valley (Valles Marineris (named after the marineris probe that discovered it in 1971) goes 6 miles down. Also the gravity on mars is over half the force of earth's.

Our rovers should be sturdy enough to survive a medium sized fall, The wheels should be able to go over jagged rocks, and not get stuck in sand like materials. It should also have an engine that can get it up large hills and be able to go down sharp slopes. I think it should also contain some kind of secret thing that it can use like a drill or a grabber arm. It could even contain some sort of jetpack type thing so it can get over rocks and large boulders that it cannot drive over.

USING JAVASCRIPT WITH SPHERO

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. It was originally made by Brendon Eich at Netscape, which was one of the first internet companies which built a popular in the days of dial-up internet. It was originally named ‘Mocha’ by the founder of netscape, Marc Andreessen who is now one of Silicon Valley's most famous entrepreneurs. Nescapes started working with Sun Microsystems. Who developed Java, which is a popular language that powered apps on early computers and cell-phones. Both companies wanted to create a plugin so that existing java apps could run natively inside the increasingly popular web browser so they wouldn’t have to rebuild it. So Netscape creates a scripting language similar to the java syntax (Syntax is the rule set for how programs are constructed) so that these apps could still be used and all the Java programmers could adapt quickly without learning a completely new language.

The language was also very powerful. Before javascript. Most of the web paes were constructed entirely from HTML and CSS. This means they were quite bland. JavaScript allowed pages to be more colourful and dynamic, they made web pages able to have animations and use playback media. How to use JavaScript. JavaScript is a case sensitive program. This means that if you even have one capital letter where there isn't meant to be a capital letter, it could ruin the whole program and make it harder for you to do what you want to do. There are also different types of cases. Camel case, Pascal case, spinal case and snake case.

CODE COMBAT

Today we have been learning to use JavaScript on our computers via Code Combat. Code Combat is a free game to use and play on your computers that teaches you the basics of coding with different code languages, Python and JavaScript are two of the languages that you get to use It hasn't been super easy but still hasn't been super hard either.

Here is a video of some o the coding we had to do in code combat: