Andrew was the winner of the Vision Zone in June 2014. Here he tells us about the project he’s been able to do using his £500 prize…
I had heard that I’m a Scientist was a fast and furious experience and boy was it! In the live chats, the questions came so fast, I thought my fingers were going to catch fire. But what a great experience too. It really felt like we were engaging with kids who hadn’t considered science interesting before. The format is great: being able to answer questions in detail in the evenings, and answering live questions (about ALL sorts of stuff!) during the lessons.
Behold, your new robotic overlord!
With the prize money I promised I would be buying some Lego to try and help teach computer vision (what you can do with a computer and a camera). But what to build? We then came across a great website which shows you how to build a Rubik’s Cube solving robot out of Lego. It uses a colour sensor to scan a cube, and then solves it using robotic components made of Lego. This struck me as an excellent way to introduce people to several parts of computer science at once – how we can sense the world around us (such as colours), how we can approach ways of solving problems (such as the Rubik’s Cube), and a bit of robotics and Lego thrown in for fun.
Who will win? Puny human child brain cells? Or cold calculating Danish plastic?
The prize money paid for enough Lego to build the system, and a couple of Rubik’s Cubes. The final result was excellent. We have so far taken it to computer science days at local schools, where it has gone down extremely well. Especially when students can race the robot to solve the puzzle! It really engages children into thinking about robots and problem solving, and how you can approach problems like understanding what we see around us.
If you’d like to build your own smarty pants Rubik’s Cube solving Lego robot, all the instructions and video evidence is at mindcuber.com/mindcub3r/mindcub3r.html
