Touch Sensor – Press it, Release it, Bump it!!
INTRO AND LEARNING GOALS
Press a button to bring a robot to life! Here is a great tutorial to get students familiar with the EV3 Touch sensor. Get pressing, releasing and bumping!- Understand how to attach the Touch sensor to your robot
- Learn how to use two Touch sensors in one program
- Create a program to start the robot with one Touch sensor and stopping it with another
- Understand the terms – press, release and bump
HOW IT WORKS – THE BASICS
The Touch sensor detects whether the red button on the front of the sensor is pressed in. It is a logic sensor. RELEASED (0) PRESSED (1) BUMPED (2) You could use it to START your robot when you press it. Or you could get your robot to STOP when the sensor is pressed upon hitting a wall.LET’S ATTACH THE TOUCH SENSOR…
In the video, John attaches two Touch sensors to his robot. The first one is attached to START his robot and the second one is to STOP it. The Touch sensor is fairly easy to attach – so it is a really good sensor to start with.LET’S GET PROGRAMMING…
We can now write a program that will use two Touch sensors to START and STOP the robot. Here, John sends a robot heading towards a Mindstorms Core Set!
SOME TEACHING THOUGHTS… from John
- The Touch sensor is a nice sensor to start with. Students play lots of games that involve pressing buttons!
- I would focus on the idea of the button being PRESSED before introducing the idea of RELEASED and BUMPED.
ROBOT WORKOUT (WHERE NEXT?)
- Introduce the students to the idea that the Touch sensor can also monitor whether the button has been RELEASED.
- Finally, introduce students to the idea that the Touch sensor can also monitor whether the button has been PRESSED and then RELEASED in the past – this is called BUMPED. BUMPED is probably the hardest concept. This table is quite useful. Maybe reproduce its structure and complete it with the students:
