Maddie Miller and Kinley Mottl try to figure out which commands they need to make their robot follow the path laid out before it.

Robots programmed to travel

by Nathan Arneal
Published 4/10/24

North Bend Central was taken over by robots last Tuesday night.

No, Skynet was not involved, but a number of students from high school to second grade have been trying their hand at programing small robots.

Tuesday was the second robot night hosted by a group of teachers allowing their students to explore the world of robots and coding outside the classroom.

Students laid out a path with multiple turns using masking tape on the carpet. The challenge was to then program their robot to follow the path.

“It feels good to complete it,” fifth grader Kinley Mottl said. “It’s hard to figure out, but when you get good at it and know it, then you get it done faster.”

Each robot was hooked up to a laptop where the students were writing block coding to control the robot. Block coding is an introductory style of coding that uses colorful blocks on the screen that represent a certain action. The students use their computer mouse to drag and drop the blocks in the order they want their robot to perform the actions. They then set a time span for how long the robot will perform the action.

For example, if the action is to turn a wheel that causes the robot to rotate clockwise, setting different times for that action will cause the robot to turn 90 degree or 180 degrees or whatever the student desires.

While the student is writing instructions in block code, the actual source code appears beside it on the screen. If students pursue more coding education, they will learn to write the source code.

Even the simplified block coding involves a lot of experimentation, math teacher Aubrey Miller said.

“I think walking in, almost all of our kids didn’t know how to code,” Miller said. “So it was just kind of like, trial and error, go.”

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