Before You Begin

Essential Questions:

• What is robot-to-robot communication, and why is it important?

• How can robots communicate with each other?

Unit Understandings:

• When robots communicate to work together, they can accomplish more complex tasks than when they are working alone.
• Robots can send messages to one another to communicate information and/or trigger behaviors.
• Project planning and communication is integral to building messaging projects successfully.

Standards Alignment

Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA)

• 1B-CS-02: Model how computer hardware and software work together as a system to accomplish tasks.
• 1B-CS-03: Determine potential solutions to solve simple hardware and software problems using common troubleshooting strategies.
• 1B-AP-10: Create programs that include sequences, events, loops, and conditionals.
• 1B-AP-11: Decompose (break down) problems into smaller, manageable subproblems to facilitate the program development process.
• 2-AP-10: Use flowcharts and/or pseudocode to address complex problems as algorithms.
• 2-AP-11: Create clearly named variables that represent different data types and perform operations on their values.
• 2-AP-12: Design and iteratively develop programs that combine control structures, including nested loops and compound conditionals.
• 2-AP-13: Decompose problems and subproblems into parts to facilitate the design, implementation, and review of programs.
• 2-AP-19: Document programs in order to make them easier to follow, test, and debug.

View additional standards from ISTE, Common Core, NGSS, and other standards bodies as well as descriptions of how and where each of these standards are met in this unit here.

Materials Needed (per group):

• VEX AIM Coding Robot
• One Stick Controller
• 2 Orange Barrels
• 2 Blue Barrels
• 2 Sports Balls
• All AprilTag IDs
• AIM Field (4 tiles and 8 walls)
• Journal

Getting Started with Robot-to-Robot Messaging

• This VEX Library article provides an overview of robot-to-robot communication.
• For help with linking two VEX AIM Coding Robots, see this article.
• This PD+ Insights Article explains how teaching your students to code using robot-to-robot communication can build their collaboration skills and help them to begin to think in systems.

Suggested Time for this Unit: 7-12 Sessions

While pacing will vary classroom to classroom, suggested timing can help you plan effectively. A “session” is considered approximately 45-50 minutes. You know your students best, so adjust timing as needed to best meet the needs of your students in your setting.

• Introduction: 1 session
• Lesson 1: 1-2 sessions
• Lesson 2: 1-2 sessions
• Lesson 3: 1-2 sessions
• Lesson 4: 1-2 sessions
• Unit Challenge: 2-3 sessions

After students have watched the video, facilitate a whole class discussion to elicit students' observations and prepare them for co-creating learning targets for the unit. 

• Ask students to share their observations, claims and evidence based on the video, modeling scientific curiosity and openness.
• As students share their questions and ideas, help students frame their wonderings as productive scientific questions.
• Guide students to consider the skills and understandings they might need to complete the challenge, as they will use these as they co-create learning targets.
• Draw on students' knowledge of human communication to help them consider what they will need to learn and know about robot-to-robot communication.

Next, help students make a real-world connection to the content in this unit and engage prior knowledge using the following prompt.

• Where might robot-to-robot communication be useful, or even essential, in the world around you? Students may mention:
  • In coastal areas, how it would be useful for search and rescue robots to communicate their locations to one another.
  • In urban settings, students might suggest self-driving vehicles, and their need to communicate to avoid collisions.
  • In rural areas, robot-to-robot communication could make farming more efficient, as seed planting robots could communicate to avoid planting overlapping areas of a field.

Students will be documenting their thinking and learning in their journals throughout this course. Ensure that each student has access to a journal. 

Guide students as a whole class through the process of co-creating learning targets.

1. Brainstorm with students what they will need to know to complete the activities shown in the video above. Frame these as “I can” statements. Example “I can” statements for this unit include:
   1. I can collaborate to code two robots to send and receive messages with each other.
   2. I can collaborate to plan a project for two robots to work together using robot-to-robot messaging.

Co-create learning targets based on that list.

For more guidance on co-creating learning targets with your students, see this VEX Library article. Then, go further and learn more about co-creating learning targets with this lesson from a VEX PD+ Masterclass.