Teachers Pet Robotics Challenge Winner Announcement

element14Dave — Fri, 20 May 2016 03:47:00 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by element14Dave on 5/20/2016 3:47:00 AM

Earlier this year element14 challenge STEM educators to use a kit including either a Raspberry Pi or Arduino to create a robot to help their students get interested in programming and robotics. 20 Challengers were shipped kits with free access to MathWorks tools including MatLAB, Simulinks and relevent toolboxes for programming various componets in the hardware kit. After much discussion with our sponsors from MathWorks, Adafruit and element14, the winner has been selected:

Kit Fuderich AKA kitfud for his Rice Krispies loader Rice Krispies Loader: The Ultimate Teacher's Pet Robot

Let's find out a little more about Kit and his reaction to being told he was the winner of the Challenge!

players.brightcove.net/.../index.html

Here is the rest of the interview:

element14: What was your reaction to winning?

KitFud: My reaction to winning is one of gratitude. My competitors had some good projects; one made a line follower which follows giant lines of post-its. Another made a robot which makes classroom announcements while another created a device which detects raised hands. So, I was just glad to see that the Rice Krispies Loader came out on top.

element14: What part would you consider the most fun of the project?

KitFud: The funnest part of my project was watching a robot deliver Rice Krispies to a bowl and then have another robot parade the load around my coffee table.

element14: What was the most challenging?

KitFud: Figuring out how to fit my 3D printed bowl on-top of my robot. I realized that I did not have all the screws I needed to do this. In the end, I installed the bowl on my robot using only two of the risers but at least this was sufficient to allow a compartment.

Learning MATLAB/SIMULINK was also challenging because I knew nothing about these programs prior to the challenge. Lucky, Madhu who works at MATLAB helped me understand some of the features of the programming language and we collaborated to create the code which enabled my vision of loading Rice Krispes to become a reality.

element14: What advice would you give to other members who are doing, or thinking of doing a Design Challenge?

KitFud: Have fun and think big. What you set out to do in the beginning may not actually be where you end up. It was fun for me to approach my project with this in mind. Because I never dreamed that one day I'd invent a robot which transports cereal.

element14: Thanks Kit, congratulations on the winning project

KitFud: Thank you David; and thank you Simulink/MATLAB, Adafruit and element14.com for your support. It was a valuable experience to take part in this challenge. My kind regards.

Thanks again to all of our Challengers. Make sure to stay up current with the latest Design Challenge news at element14.com/designchallenges

Tags: stem, teachers_pet_robotics_design_challenge, teachers_pet, teachers pet sub space