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Ri Engineering Masterclasses 2021

Royal Institution Engineering Masterclasses 2021

Robotics - Moving Intelligently

A picture of a vehicle kit with a cardboard chassis and a micro:bit controller

Micro:Bit controlled vehicle kits - a good place to start for making intelligent vehicles!

This series of masterclass sessions is a bit different to a usual Ri Engineering Masterclass because we can't be in the classrooms with you! Instead, this series of masterclasses uses a box purchased from Kitronik to introduce the ideas of intelligent vehicles, calibrating components, coding, algorithms, and how engineers design technology to balance all the pros and cons of any creation.

The final challenge will ask students to fill out a calibration sheet modelled after standard industrial processes and then reflect on what they have learned and how they think intelligent vehicles will impact themselves as well as wider society.

In the final session, please fill in this feedback form to let us know what you thought and help us improve our activities.

As ever, if you have any questions during this activity, get in touch at wmgoutreach@warwick.ac.uk

By adding sensors to future vehicles, it allows us to phase out the need for a human driver with the added benefit of the sensors being incredibly robust and being able to detect objects with much more detail and further away compared to humans. We at WMG are bridging this gap between what we have on our roads now and where we want to be with connected autonomous vehicles in order to create much safer and accessible transport systems for everyone.

Additional Content

Dr Joe Smyth - Putting the "self" back into self-driving vehicles

Amar Gohil - Teaching cars to sense our world

Links to files

Code

Download the starting microbit code here. (ZIP version)

Download the starting microbit code here. (Hex version)

Student Workbook

Download student workbook - click here.

Calibration Sheet (Reflective activity at end of masterclass)

Download calibration sheet - click here.

Teacher's Pack

Download teacher pack - click here.

Link to all files.

Evaluation Report

Click here to find out more about how this event was organised and how well it worked in the classroom. In short, students enjoyed building the kit and having the opportunity to tinker with it. There are recommendations for improvements and, keen to always improve, we will update this page with those recommended modifications as soon as we can.