Junkbots

The funding may have unfortunately stopped but the activities continue. On 30th March the Junkbots activities return to Brooke Weston School . The students had to build a 'junkbot' from initially a motor and propeller and any 'junk' that was around. There were three tasks. 1. The junkbot had to get a can across a line. 2. Similar to the previous activity but this time as well as the can there was other junk (bottle tops and some small steel bits) away from the can. These also had to be transferred across the line. 3. To make the junkbots steerable. It was never the intention that all the tasks were achieved in the time, but the student's tried out their own groups ideas with little input from the tutors. Some very innovative results were produced. Thank you to Mr Nigel Barratt for inviting me back and supporting the activities. Teacher Mr Barrett said: ‘ The students just got on with it and devised the models themselves. They experimented all the w...

Thank you to the students and staff at Brooke Weston School, Corby, UK for working with us on this project. Here are some of the comments made by the students. Several of the students identified some interesting features about building robots out of 'junk': "We had the [f]reedom to show the teachers what skills we have" (Student B) "interesting overall" (Student H) "...but frustrating because modifications were frequent" (Student J) "The activity was very fun and creative. We experience lots of difficulties to overcome." (Student K) "it was nice have time off timetable once in a while" (Student N) "I found that building the junk bots has made me some new friends..." (Student T) "...as we[ we]re able to put any ideas forward to put ideas forward to create our own creation" (Student V) The programming of the robots caused a differences in opinion which seemed to come down to two main factors, that th...

Students at Brooke Weston School, Corby have been working with the University of Northampton's School of Science and Technology on the junkbots project. Scott Turner and Terry Tudor on the 16th and 17th February 2010 went to the school to run the sessions. Starting with a talk and activities on waste management, including how much waste the UK produced, and in terms of numbers of slices of toast what is the cost of energy of leaving a monitor on overnight.   The task was to produce robots out of rubbish that could carry other rubbish into a containment area. The change made to the sessions was that students brought there own 'junk' to the sessions. S ome innovative and creative designs were produced involving 'legs', wheels (including turning cans into wheels and wheels from old toys).    Some of the designs pushed rubbish into the area, but one of the designs carried the rubbish into the area and some designs used magnets to pick up small steel parts (nuts a...