Learn to Program Self-Driving Cars (and Help Duckies Commute) With Duckietown Robotics

Materials Needed

Student Interactive Notebook to record ideas

Student Worksheet 1: 2 per 6-student team

Student Worksheet 2: 1 per student team

Student Worksheet 3: 1 per student

Student Worksheet 4: 1 per student

Student Worksheet 5: 1 per student

Student Worksheet 6: 1 per student

Student Worksheet 7

Student Worksheet 8

One EV3 robot per team of 6 students to have students construct and program to complete the mission.

Obstacles to represent surface rocks and craters on Mars (See Teacher Tip in Preparation)

Objects to represent titanium and rock samples. Small traffic cones or blocks work well

1 stopwatch per team (for use by the team timer)/ul>
1 set of job cards per team (see Section Preparation, Step A)
6 index cards (3x5)
Lego table to set up an obstacle course

Background Information: Teacher Knowledge

Robots can go places and do tasks that humans cannot These tasks include things like exploring and mining. Robots do not need air, food, or water However, robots such as Curiosity and Perseverance can be given waypoints and instructions to perform to complete their mission. Robots have been used for space exploration since the inception of space flight. Today, rovers from multiple nations occupy various planetary bodies throughout the solar system Previous rovers are not driven with a joystick or wheel; they are programmed by people on Earth who use cameras on the robots and satellite images to plot out a path for the robot to follow. Autonomous vehical engineers, on the other hand, must address a hugely complex, dynamic, high-speed environment that includes human drivers with their errors, lots of other vehicles, traffic lights, and more. It’s all of these additional elements that make it more difficult to build and develop safe and efficient autonomous vehicals at scale here on Earth. Students are tasked to build and program a rover that will navigate around obstacles using programming, planning, and control.

Resources

ASA’s Lunar Rover: Everything you need to know

How do you drive a $2.5 billion Mars Rover?

Phase 1: Design a rover that can follow user-defined driving commands to avoid obstacles to retrieve minerals without crashing.

Phase 2: Design an autonomous vehicle that uses sensors to autonomously drives to avoid obstacles to retrieve minerals.