Our school has a fantastic K-12 robotics program. We're always looking for a way to challenge our students though, and building an OpenROV is the next step I would like to take with my students.
I work primarily with home school students.
Like most children, they enjoy learning about technology. Some of our students participate on competitive robotics teams, while others attend robotics sessions one hour a week. We also have several students who enjoy just building, so we offer sessions that involve building bridges, building simple and mechanized machines, and architecture. Other popular sessions include Android App development and 3D printing and design.
We also have students ready and willing to engage in very challenging tasks such as our Artificial Intelligence with Arduinos session. Over the past semester they have worked hard to build and program robots that will eventually navigate a maze. The project involved soldering, wiring circuits on a breadboard, and some assembly, all of which they enjoyed immensely. They are demonstrating a great deal of patience and persistence as they learn to program their robots.
My Project
Our students will learn to build and pilot an OpenROV, which is no trivial task. Just making an underwater vehicle that is water tight will require more precision, attention to detail, and persistence than our previous projects. Learning how to hook up the electronics and control motors that require electronic speed controllers is a big step into new territory as well.
In addition to following the instruction set of the OpenROV, we will also take time to learn how a BeagleBone Black can control LEDs and motors as well as read sensors. Eventually we will work on extending the capabilities of the existing OpenROV so that it can be remotely controlled from the web.
Building an OpenROV will allow us to take the next step in our continual push to provide our students with ever more challenging projects.
I hope it will give our students the experience, skills, and confidence to tackle sophisticated projects of their own and I am certain It will inspire our younger students when we let them pilot the OpenROV at various community events.
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