TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Remote Control Using Bluetooth
Building on what they learned about wired and wireless electrical connections in the associated lesson, students use Android phones to take advantage of Bluetooth wireless connections to remotely guide LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots through...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: That's Hot! Robot Brain Programming
With the challenge to program computers to mimic the human reaction after touching a hot object, students program LEGO robots to "react" and move back quickly once their touch sensors bump into something. By relating human senses to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Commanding a Robot Using Sound
Students continue their exploration of the human senses and their engineering counterparts, focusing on the auditory sense. Working in small groups, students design, create and run programs to control the motion of LEGO TaskBots. By...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pupillary Response & Test Your Reaction Time
Students observe and test their reflexes, including the (involuntary) pupillary response and (voluntary) reaction times using their dominant and non-dominant hands, as a way to further explore how reflexes occur in humans. They gain...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Understanding Communication With a Robot
Student pairs first act out the instructions a robot is given with one person providing instructions and the other person following the instructions. This activity helps students understand how a robot is programmed and with what type of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Movement Task Using Sensors Humans and Robots
This activity helps students understand the significance of programming and also how the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot's sensors assist its movement and make programming easier. Students compare human senses to robot sensors, describing...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Music by Touch
Through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, students learn programming skills and logic design as they program robot computers to play sounds and rotate a wheel when a touch sensor is pressed, and then...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Control Using Sound
Students gain a deeper understanding of how sound sensors work through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT taskbots and sound sensors.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Follow the Light
A lesson involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and light sensors, student pairs program the robots to follow a flashlight as its light beam moves around.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Don't Bump Into Me!
Students' understanding of how robotic ultrasonic sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and ultrasonic sensors.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mars Rover App Creation
Based on their experience exploring the Mars rover Curiosity and learning about what engineers must go through to develop a vehicle like Curiosity, students create Android apps that can control LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, simulating the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robot Design Challenges
Through the two lessons and five activities in this unit, students' knowledge of sensors and motors is integrated with programming logic as they perform complex tasks using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and software.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Computer Program?
Through four lesson and four activities, students are introduced to the logic behind programming using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Our Bodies Have Computers and Sensors
Students learn about the human body's system components, specifically its sensory systems, nervous system and brain, while comparing them to robot system components, such as sensors and computers. The unit's life sciences-to-engineering...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do Sensors Work?
Through six lesson/activity sets, students learn about the functioning of sensors, both human and robotic
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robotics Peripheral Vision
This unit is designed for advanced programming classes. It leads students through a study of human vision and computer programming simulation. Students apply their previous knowledge of arrays and looping structures to implement a new...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Are Gears? What Do They Do?
Learners are introduced to an important engineering element- the gear. This prepares them to apply this knowledge in four associated activities in order to create successful solutions to design challenges that use LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Program?
Using a few blindfolds and a simple taped floor maze exercise, students come to understand that computers rely completely upon instructions given in programs and thus programs must be comprehensive and thorough. Then students learn to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make a Program Wait?
Building on the programming basics learned so far in a corresponding Robotics unit, students learn how to program using sensors rather than by specifying exact durations. Working with the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and software, they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make Loops and Switches?
Students learn how to program using loops and switches. Using the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, sensors and software, student pairs perform three mini programming activities using loops and switches individually, and then combined.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Bluetooth?
Students learn about electrical connections, how they work, and their pervasiveness in our world. Two specific skills explored are Morse code and the function of Bluetooth. Using bluetooth, they control LEGO robots remotely from Android...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Brain Is a Computer
Students learn about the similarities between the human brain and its engineering counterpart, the computer. Since students work with computers routinely, this comparison strengthens their understanding of both how the brain works and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Human and Robot Sensors
Learners are provided with a rigorous background in human "sensors" (including information on the main five senses, sensor anatomies, and nervous system process) and their engineering equivalents, setting the stage for three associated...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Reflecting on Human Reflexes
Students learn about human reflexes, how our bodies react to stimuli and how some body reactions and movements are controlled automatically, without thinking consciously about the movement or responses. In the associated activity,...