Robotics at home!
Beginning robotics projects can seem daunting when you are learning right along side your kids. Here at Rosie we recognize that beginner robots need to be fun, easy, and do cool things. That’s why we put together this home science project for you to follow along with. You don’t need too much for your first robotics project. This one needs a computer fan 9V battery, markers and a rubber band. If you want to take it a step further and make it pretty, just add in a 9V connector (you know, the little hat you put on top of the 9V battery), and a little soldering experience!
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Now its time to play with our computer part robot!
Just attach the battery and voila! You have a mesmerizing drawing machine for kids to play with. Of course, at Rosie Research, we like to test things, and see how that changes our drawing robot. First we altered the weights taped to the fan blade. We started with 6 quarters taped to the bottom of one blade, which really made our robot go! Then we tested it with 4 quarters and 2 quarters, realizing that computer fan robot draws differently for each of these. We had the chance to compare drawings and see how the size of the scribbles increased with weight!
Isabella then had the grand idea to see what happened when our robot had short legs instead of long legs, that’s when we really got some good loops!
Optimizing our computer fan robot.
We noticed a few things while we played with our homemade robot. Mainly, the legs would easily tilt causing the whole robot to come crashing down. We tried a few ideas on how to fix this until we settled upon gluing on marker holders.
I had a pack of terminal ends that just happened to perfectly fit Pentel markers. We hot glued these on the top and bottoms of the corner as marker holders, adding a piece of masking tape around the marker for extra support. This made the homemade robot much more sturdy and seemed to add a new element of fun to our project! Give it a try and let us know how it worked out for you!
This is great. I may buy a set of my kid. Thank you for sharing.