Servo - January 2013

www.servomagazine.com/index.php?/magazine/article/january2013_GeerHead

GEERHEAD UC Davis — a 100+ year old institution of higher education — is encouraging STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) educational enhancements through the use of Mobots: a robot module platform created by Engineering Professor Harry H. Cheng and his master's student Graham Ryland. The plastic Mobots with their user-friendly programming and software are already in use in many area schools.

Let’s take a look at the robot's nature, construction, modularity, technologies, and applicability to the classroom.

A Mobot modular robot configuration. The Mobots modules each have hardware interfaces that rotate, as well as joints that move. Students can connect and program a number of the modules to create various robots with multiple capabilities.

Modular Mobots

The Mobots from Professor Cheng (and now Barobo Robotics) are an entirely wireless (Bluetooth enabled) modular robotics platform offering several degrees of freedom per module which multiplies into many degrees of freedom per robot as more Mobots are added.

These simple fun modules are completely safe and easily snapped together, making them the “Tinker toys” of educational robots, so to speak. Students apply math, engineering, and programming skills to configure the modules into robots that demonstrate the practical motion and interaction capabilities of the platform.

While the modules can stand up to heavy classroom use, they are constrained from causing harm by software that innately eliminates risky collisions and movements. Students can interact with the robots physically and up close while programming them or actually running their programs.

The K- 12 STEM education platform consists of individual Mobot modules, each with four degrees of freedom plus their add-ons. Each module can stand, crawl, turn, roll and tumble, connect to other modules, and turn attachable wheels and parts. Mobots create 4 x 4 trucks, snakes, dogs, humanoids, or anything a student can imagine within the scope of any combination of modules.

The Mobot modules are individually programmable, and connected Mobots are simultaneously controlled by their programming via Bluetooth as mentioned. The platform requires only a laptop or computer with Bluetooth. The modules never require external wires. All the modules run on two rechargeable 9V batteries which are included. These give each module two hours of battery life.