Activity 5: The Great Race- Teacher Notes

Activity Setup / 30 Minutes
Calculations / None
Reliability / Excellent
Interest / Excellent
Activity Time / 60 minutes

Objective:

Student will become familiar with driving the robot. They will begin to develop a preference for the type of RC control that they prefer; TANK style or ARCADE style. Some students may even develop a hybrid type of control.

Materials:

4 – Soup Cans

1- Roll Blue Painters Masking Tape

1 – Roll Clear Packaging tape

2 - Stop Watches

BaseBots

Transmitters

Two different sets of transmitting/receiving crystals

Hazards:

Always make sure the controller is turned off when plugging in or removing cables!

Never plug the orange interface cable into the Rx1 or Rx2 Port!

Make sure that the battery is plugged in properly.

Make sure the Transmitter Frequency and the Receiver Frequency Match.

Make sure that the other BaseBots are using a different frequency.

Make sure student wear safety glasses when driving the robots.

Make sure students turn BaseBots off when repairing.

Make sure students stay off the course while the race is in progress.

The Course:

Outline the course with blue painter’s masking tape. The soup cans are used for the slalom cones. They need to be taped down securely with the clear packing tape.

Teaching Strategies:

Students should be allowed to practice on the course before the race. It is helpful if the track is set up during Activity #4 so that they practice the different RC control styles on the actual race course.

You may have up to four robots racing at one time. However, two per race works well and generates a lot of excitement.

The race duration can be set from anywhere between one to five laps. It is important to make sure that each student gets to participate as a driver. Suggestions include having a number of one lap races or having a five lap race with team members alternating after each lap.

Scoring:

Depending on how you set up the races you may score them based on their time as compared to the other students, or based on their performance in an individual race. The scoring method on the activity sheet is just one suggested method.

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