The genesis of the Jade robot was a result of my taking Lean Six Sigma classes while I was working at a large metropolitan electronics company and seeing what was possible in the manufacturing environment. As we were doing our early workshop sessions, I could see
that we were continually having the same issues; the build
process was successful (Figure 6) but it took a lot of time
and energy. Generally in the latter part of the sessions, we
didn’t have enough of either to do much more than
demonstrate a few built-in features of the robot.
Along with this was an amazing amount of set-up and
tear-down that was required for the sessions, along with
the tools that went along with building the robots (to
ensure proper spacing of wheels pressed onto axles, we
included spark plug gappers as part of the build kit). The
first step to changing this was to use pre-assembled robots.
Providing pre-built robots to the attendees was a game
changer for us. What the attendees were doing in terms of
actually experimenting with the robots at the end of the
SERVO 12.2014 47
As described by its creator, Myke Predko
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future in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). We've made our
share of mistakes (err, "learning
experiences"), but we've learned a lot
(especially when it comes to listening) and
have been lucky to have been helped by so
many talented individuals who have given
up their time and energy to help us in our
workshop and classroom sessions, as well as
provide us with guidance and ideas to make
us better. Thirteen years later, we have
something that allows us to bring robotics to
a variety of different age groups from six to
college level, with capabilities that make
technology accessible and fun. Figure 3. The first robot we worked with. A breadboard wire-your-own based on the Tab Sumo-Bot chassis.
Figure 4. The original Tab Electronics robot — nine volt
battery fun!
Figure 5. The Tab Sumo-Bot. It took quite a while, but we
were able to come up with a process in which 35 or more
robots could be built simultaneously without problems.
