robots or Quad Copter projects

Hi Rick,

I have used this site for getting my kids into robotics.

www.instructables.com

Here there are lots of ideas for students, from easy to advanced. I do hope this helps.

Dale W

Rick,

This is an excellent project for almost any age 8-18. Your question in specific asks about quadcopters vs. robots (land, submersible, etc not mentioned) so let me offer this:

Although a quadcopter, particularly a drone, will give you the greatest "wow" factor, it has some drawbacks for younger students:

• The build will be more expensive than either a land (tracks/wheels) or water (boat/ROV) robot due to the need for multi-axis control circuitry.
• Battery life will typically equate to hours charging and waiting, 10-15 minutes of air time, <repeat>.
• Environmental effects can be catastrophic (wind gusts can turn your quad into expensive debris).
• Some cities are passing laws restructing the use of quads/drones/etc that could limit its use depending on your local area.
• Lift props spin at high speeds, offering continuous potential for material damage or injury not present in other options.

For my Middle-School/High-School (grades 8 through 12, ages 13-18) students, I usually start them off with a land robot design in the Fall/Winter due to the cold and an ROV submersible design during Spring/Summer workshops. Motors can be under $2 each, continuous evolution servos are easier to manage at around $3-4 each compared to a quadcopter's motors that can start around $20-30 each depending on your voltage and amperage requirements. The electronics are very much simpler for non-flying robots because feedback channels can be simpler and particularly in the case of an ROV (see SeaPerch or OpenROV in Google) you can supply power and control via a simple tether and return a good video signal by the same route using inexpensive ethernet cabling. This makes it much easier to change out power sources for extended operation rather than carrying your batteries onboard.

Although they are not the "coolest" designs without some design work by the students, MIT's SeaPerch ROV can be built for under $50 (I built some around $27 each with common PVC pipe frames and off-the-shelf DC hobby motors). To let each student watch what their own ROV is doing as they explore the local coast, pond, lake, pool, I used a small backup camera and 7" TVT display for cars (both together at $35 total via Amazon) to create a separate unit that could be clipped to the ROV and control unit, so each student could operate their ROV as a remote inspection tool but the cost for each ROV was cut down significantly so everyone could build and paint their own. The students searched for "treasure" I distributed ahead of time while discussing ecological effects of dumping, artificial reefs, and the use of ROVs in deep water exploration (the Gulf Horizon event was recent last year), which allows many learning opportunities for everyone and the team efforts to work together for the final exercise let each group compete with the video feed piped to a large flat-panel television as well as the small operator's display so everyone could watch, plan, cheer and so on.

For a traditional land robot, a wheeled design can be built using just motors or hobby servos driving wheels on a simply square of wood or fiberglass PCB that supports the batteries and electronics. I recommend the magnificent Arduino microcontroller for programming sensors and reactionsm as it is a very durable design, inexpensive (you can build your own for around $5-10 each from an Atmel processor and a few standard caps/resistors/etc or just buy one or a dozen), and have a magnificent community of supprot and examples already out there - check MAKE or Instuctable's Arduino section for some ideas. You can have touch-sensors, ultrasonic or optical range measurement, even color sensors and other options on this delightful open source platform with the basic design costing around the same cost as a single quadrotor motor and motor controller pair alone.

Either a land or water design works well as a first-robot, as you can integrate the same type of multi-axis sensor suite (pitch/roll/yaw, magnetic compass, accelerometer, thermometer, etc) on those for feedback to let your students learn about those before they try to take them up into the sky when they tnd to fall back down wtih less than desirable regularity. Adding a video camera or a pair of improvised hydrophones to an water design or similar input devices for a land build can let you engage your students in an immersive experience they will certainly not soon forget. Once the basics work, then you let them add additional capabilities to continually explore more and more opportunities and interesting locations as their own skills and capabilties develop.

Respectfully,

Kalani Kirk Hausman

There's a channel by Dennis Baldwin on youtube I've been following about his quest to 3d print and build a small quad copter. He's very informative and does lots of demonstrations of how he has to keep refining the design as he goes along (though does get hung up on the electronics and motors towards the end of this particular build). Good viewing though along with all his other nice videos.

Check his channel out here:  https://www.youtube.com/user/dennisbaldwin

I'd recommend if you go that route and make a few like his small quad project, go with the hobbyking KK2 board. It's cheap so you could have a few of them and have the kids work in groups and also has an LCD display to make it easy to set up and configure. Also, hobbyking will have plenty of cheap motors and ESC's to use, far cheaper than anything that is offered in stores. Same with recievers, props, power distribution boards, bullet connectors, extension and/or male-to-male servo wires (you'll need a few). Keep in mind the cheaper stuff and better selection comes from their "international warehouse" in China so it takes a while for shipping. Figure on at least 2-3 weeks but you may get lucky. Order batteries or heavy parts separate at the US warehouse since shipping is more on heavy items and lipo batteries limit the international shipping options.

I'd say select a good priced motor/ESC/prop combo you want to use first, then you can figure the size of the copter you want to build based off that and just follow Baldwin's idea of wood rods as the booms and then 3d print the other frame pieces. They can even 3d print a nice cover to go over the electronics. Also, it may be good for teaching them a bit about soldering. Sometimes the power distribution boards need a little soldering and/or at least a few bullet ends (3.5mm tends to be mostly used) for motors or ESC connections.

Tons of stuff to teach and learn about when it comes to this stuff, and ends up being "fun". There's also a new ongoing series from the Make channel on youtube where they are slowly going over the basics of RC planes (which would also be applicable to multirotors). Only a few episodes so far but good introduction: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwhkA66li5vCTL5lUm0zoCBBY4LNPTGeO

Another resource with folks always doing scratch builds of things and using laser cutting and 3d printing quite a bit (as well as a great learning resource) is Flite Test on youtube. very entertaining to watch and quite varied on what they show. https://www.youtube.com/user/flitetest

Edit: forgot to mention a guy on youtube that does exactly this stuff with kids, well at least scratch builds and the associated electronics... https://www.youtube.com/user/sshoover10