TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Humans Are Like Robots
Four lessons related to robots and people present students with life sciences concepts related to the human body (including brain, nervous systems and muscles), introduced through engineering devices and subjects (including computers,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make Loops and Switches?
Young scholars learn how to program using loops and switches. Using the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, sensors and software, student pairs perform three mini programming activities using loops and switches individually, and then combined.
Read Works
Read Works: How to Make a Better Robot
[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about improvements in robotics. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
ABCya
Ab Cya: Make a Robot
Kids will enjoy engaging in this interactive to build a virtual robot. Extend the activity by printing out the creation and incorporating language arts as students write a descriptive story about their new robotic friend or an expository...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biomimicry: Echolocation in Robotics
Students use ultrasonic sensors and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to emulate how bats use echolocation to detect obstacles. They measure the robot's reaction times as it senses objects at two distances and with different sensor threshold...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Putting Robots to Work With Force & Friction
Students learn about the concept of pushing, as well as the relationship between force and mass. Students practice measurement skills using pan scales and rulers to make predictions about mass and distance. A LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Movement Task Using Sensors Humans and Robots
This activity helps students understand the significance of programming and also how the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot's sensors assist its movement and make programming easier. Students compare human senses to robot sensors, describing...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make a Program Wait?
Building on the programming basics learned so far in a corresponding Robotics unit, learners learn how to program using sensors rather than by specifying exact durations. Working with the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and software, they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Understanding Movement in Humans and Robots
This activity helps students understand how a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot moves using motors and wheels. Then students relate the concepts of decision-making actuation and motion in humans to their parallels in mechanized robots, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Human and Robot Sensors
Students are provided with a rigorous background in human "sensors" (including information on the main five senses, sensor anatomies, and nervous system process) and their engineering equivalents, setting the stage for three associated...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Are We Like Robots?
Students explore the similarities between how humans move and walk and how robots move, so they come to see the human body as a system from an engineering point-of-view. Movement results from decision making (deciding to walk and move)...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hare and Snail Challenges
Students extend the ideas learned in the maze challenge in this unit with a focus more on the robot design. They learn how to design the gear train from the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT servomotor to the wheel to make the LEGO taskbot go faster...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robo Clock
Students learn various topics associated with the circle through studying a clock. Topics include reading analog time, understanding the concept of rotation (clockwise vs. counter-clockwise), and identifying right angles and straight...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Save the Stuffed Animal! Push & Pull
Students develop an understanding of the concepts of "push" and "pull" as they "save" stuffed animals from danger using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots. After learning more about the concepts through a robot demonstration, students explore...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Haptics: Touch Command
Students experience haptic (the sense of touch) feedback by using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and touch sensors to emulate touch feedback recognition. With four touch sensors connected to LEGO NXTs, they design sensor attachments that...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: On Track Unit Conversion
Students use three tracks marked on the floor, one in yards, one in feet and one in inches. As they start and stop a robot specific distances on a "runway," they can easily determine the equivalent measurements in other units by looking...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Claw
Students learn about gear ratios and power by operating toy mechanical cranes of differing gear ratios. They attempt to pick up objects with various masses to witness how much power must be applied to the system to oppose the force of...
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Real Scientists: Electrical Engineer
Discover how an electrical engineer is using artificial intelligence to make robots "smarter." Consider how robots can be used to explore other planets.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Parallel and Intersecting Lines: A Collision Course?
Students act as civil engineers developing safe railways as a way to strengthen their understanding of parallel and intersecting lines. Using pieces of yarn to visually represent line segments, students lay down "train tracks" on a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Sound Sensor Work?
Students learn about how sound sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of hearing. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to appreciate how robots can take sensor input and use it to make...
Curated OER
Science Kids: Science Images: Robot Parts
This photo shows a view looking down on a number of robot parts that combine to make a programmable robot that can perform complex movements. Some of the visible parts include wires, servo motors and metal brackets.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Makers: Collection
The Maker Party, an initiative in which people around the world meet up, learn to make things, and share what they've made online. This collection is designed to support the Maker Party by providing a one-stop shop of STEM and digital...
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Tree of Combinations (Practice)
Drag the robot parts onto the screen to make all combination of heads and bodies.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Table of Combinations (Practice)
Drag the robot parts onto the screen to make all combinations of heads and bodies using the table provided.