Practice
In the last section, you learned about the elements of a robot arm and how different arm mechanisms work. Now, you are going to apply what you have learned to iterate on the build to complete the Improve Your Arm practice activity.
In this activity, your robot will have to drive to an IQ Cube, pick up the cube, and lift it on top of another cube to make a stack. You will iterate on the design of the arm to improve your robot's ability to stack the cube. Watch the video below to see how you can apply what you have learned to complete the Improve Your Arm practice activity.
Now it's your turn to complete the Improve Your Arm practice activity!
In this animation, a Controller is used to drive the robot to the red cube, pick it up, then lift the cube and place it on top of the blue cube. This animation shows one possible way your robot could move to complete the Improve Your Arm practice activity.
Use this document as a reference to complete the practice activity.
As you complete the Improve Your Arm practice activity, document the following in your engineering notebook:
- Describe and illustrate your robot design.
- How does your claw and arm design work together to complete the activity?
- How can you iterate on this design to improve the robot's performance?
See the image on the left for an example of how you can record your design ideas and tests.
Arm Designs
In the Learn section, you learned about different types of arm designs and were shown these animations during the video. Use these arm animations below to reference while iterating on your arm's design.
4-Bar Arm
This arm is made up of parallel linkages that allow the object being raised to remain level. This is the arm design used in the Clawbot build instructions. Watch the animation to see the movement of the 4-Bar Arm.
Swing Arm
A swing arm is one of the easiest arms to assemble. The end of the arm follows an arc as the gear turns and could pass over the top and reach the other side of the robot as shown in this animation.
Double Reverse 4-Bar Arm
This arm takes more time to assemble, but is useful when the end manipulator of the arm needs to be kept level at all times or to reach higher. The double reverse 4-bar arm is made up of a top and bottom 4-bar with two vertical sections, which can be seen in this animation.
Prepare for the Challenge
In Compete (on the next page), you will test your arm designs in the Stacked Up Challenge. Learn how to compete in the challenge, check your understanding, then practice for the challenge.
The goal of this challenge is to use the Controller to drive your robot and stack as many cubes as you can within a minute.
Watch this animation to see an example of a Clawbot stacking cubes in the Stacked Up Challenge.
Follow the steps in this document to learn more about how to complete this challenge.
Check Your Understanding
Before beginning the challenge, ensure that you understand the rules and setup of the challenge by answering the questions in the document below in your engineering notebook.
Check Your Understanding questions
After completing the questions, try practicing the challenge.
Select Next > to compete in the Stacked Up Challenge.