Summer SAVY Session 4, Day 4, Programming and Robotics
Day 4: We didn’t waste any time getting started today because we had a packed day of new ideas planned! That didn’t keep us from getting started by reading The Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown to help inspire our brains about what future robots might be able to do automatically. Automatically was our theme for the entire day as it connected to coding, learning about AI, and programming their LEGO robots to do events automatically.
Then, we started our journey to conquer conditionals. This process requires problem-solving using sequential true/false statements. We played a card game that had rules written in conditional format. To do this we practiced “if…then…” statements and added more conditionals with “if….else….” Such as “If (red card drawn) your team gets a point. Else (red card not drawn) other team gets a point. This is an advanced skill that can be difficult to pick up. I am really proud of the perseverance I have seen while working on puzzles with conditionals.
After lunch, we continued to learn about how artificial intelligence collects data to learn. We identified downfalls with this process if the data it’s collecting is inaccurate based on human fault. In order to understand this process, we studied the website quickdraw.withgoogle.com. It is a worldwide A.I. experiment where the program tries to guess what you were asked to draw. It uses over 15 million images drawn by people around the world to try and identify your image. This was a very exciting and engaging activity to look at machine learning because it also allows you to view how other people have drawn the same item.
The most exciting part of the day was when they engineered new features for their Lego Boost robots. Some groups built a human-like robot that moved with treads and others created a robot that had a belt with sensors similar to what you would see in warehouses. I am thrilled with their ability to make connections to other industries! They were all excited about the bulldozer that could stop at an item to pick it up and the cat that could move its eyes.
Tonight ask your programmers:
- Why are conditionals important to a program?
- How was the machine robot on quick draw able to guess your pictures?
- What was one puzzle on code.org that you struggled with today?
- How does your team communicate while building the Lego robot?