Mad Lab came to us on Tuesday 13th March, throwing random objects, such as pipe cleaners, tape, LEDs, batteries and toothbrush heads it seemed very confusing at first, but exciting!
We only got given the LEDs and batteries at first and I soon noticed that it only took the LED to touch the battery for the circuit to be made! A very easy, cheap yet effective option. We then got given a set of two wires, two toothbrush heads, a motor (for the vibrations the robot needs to move), cable ties and ink. it was really hard in the session upto lunchtime to really create something that not only functioned but had a unique way of moving to the others in the class, the brushbot kept falling apart or not working so took a lot of adaptations. I soon realised that the motor needed a weight in order for the bot to move more, this weight in turn would rotate rapidly, therefore adding the battery and LED made our robot look like a rotating beacon of light!
After lunch we were able to reform our robots into a more successful one, working on what didnt work before. As my robot fell apart in the 'robot wars' before lunch it took so serious work. But this time round i was to concern with speed, just the athsetics of the model and thought of using the rotating motor to see if the brushbot had any ability to fly! By creating helicopter 'fans' out of a paper plate and carefully winding the circuit with tape to form a helicopter body, my brushbot really had the looks, but unfortunately wasnt able to fly in the air. This meant the speed of the robot needed to be assessed so by cutting the fans down the robot moved faster.
We took part in a robot race and then made a painting using the bristles attached to our robots. It came out with a lovely spontaneous effect!
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