Computer Programming Science Fair Projects
on Robot's Speed and Accuracy

Robot Science Fair Projects

When working on a science fair project that involves a robot you really need to be creative. While it is interesting to see that a student is able to build a robot this process in its self is not a project. You need to apply what you learned about robotics so a problem.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of various computer programs on a robot’s speed and accuracy.

I became interested in robots many years ago and now I want to know how they actually work.

The information gained from this experiment might help factory owners and managers who use robotic devices to understand that a robot’s software makes a difference in its performance.

Bioloid Beginner Programmable Robot	ER-6 Programmable Robot	OWI-535 Robotic Arm Edge	OWI-007 Robotic Arm Kit	Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0
Ages 12 and up	Ages 10 and up	Age 10 and up	Ages 10 and up	Ages 10 thru College

HYPOTHESIS

My hypothesis was that the touch sensor would have more speed and accuracy than the light sensor would.

I based my hypothesis on what it said in World Book Encyclopedia 1992. Most robots use touch sensors to know when to stop without smashing something or not going far enough.

EXPERIMENT DESIGN

The constants in this study were:

-Task robot was given
-Stopwatch used
-Location of experiment

The manipulated variable was the various computer programs.

The responding variable was the time it took for the robots to do the tasks.

The responding variable was measured by timing the robot with a stopwatch.

MATE

PROCEDURES

1. Build robot using legos.
2. Equip robot with light sensor and the 5-step programming.
3. Make the robot do the task and time it with the stopwatch.
4. Record time it took to for robot to finish task.
5. Repeat step 2 using the 6-step programming.
6. Repeat steps 3-4.
7. Repeat step 1 using the 7-step programming.
8. Repeat steps 3-4.
9. Repeat step 2 using the touch sensor.
10. Repeat steps 3-8.

RESULTS

The original purpose of this experiment was to find which type of programming would have better speed and accuracy.

The results of the experiment were that the light sensor did better than a touch sensor in both speed and accuracy.

CONCLUSION

My hypothesis was that the touch sensor would have had more speed and accuracy than the light sensor could.

The results indicate that this hypothesis should be rejected.

Because of the results of this experiment, I wonder if I were to try using a different kind of sensor such as weight sensors or pressure sensors and see which one would be better than the light sensor?

If I were to conduct this project again I would use more tasks and use more than 2 different sensors. Also I have an idea about using 2 robots instead of one. I would have used both of them at the same time and tried to find which of them would be faster and I think that timing them this way would be more accurate.