INTRO AND LEARNING GOALS

Use the medium motor to power an attachment that will grab objects. In this tutorial we’ll explore how we can use the medium motor.

• Learn how to create a simple mechanism to move two LEGO elements
• Understand how to fix the medium motor and its attachment to a robot
• Explore programming the medium motor

LET’S DO A REALLY QUICK BUILD…

In this video, John shows how to build a mechanism that will get your robot grabbing objects! Using the spiral gear and a couple of other gears, and you’ll soon be grabbing lots of objects!

LET’S GET PROGRAMMING…

Programming the medium motor is simple but you will need to try out different values to get the desired result. This one worked quite well…

SOME TEACHING THOUGHTS… from John

• Plug the medium motor into Port A and remember to ‘click’ that cable into place.
• Start with a low power level so that you can see the effect – and avoid your mechanism breaking itself off!
• If your mechanism is moving in the wrong direction, change the ‘power’ level to a negative number.
• Your program may need to ‘reverse’ the motor position to release a grabbed object.
• Add other bricks to the mechanism to make it achieve the precise movement that you want.
• When the motor is ‘stopped’ (if it’s obstructed for instance) from completing the number of degrees, it will not do anything else until it is allowed to complete the specified number of degrees (so when the obstruction is removed).

ROBOT WORKOUT (WHERE NEXT?)

• Experiment grabbing objects of different sizes, shapes and weights.
• See if students can get the robot to sense an object and then pick it up
• A personal favourite – and quite tricky – can the students get a robot to pick up a ball…