Session 16 March: TT Lego Bots

On the 16 of March we had an interesting activity with a Virtual Lego Bot in ToonTalk. Below I report the tasks of the activity and pupils will post their answers as comments.

Driving the Sweeper Bot

This is  a TT model of the Sweeper bot, you can take it and put as many balls as you like in the white picture were the robot is free to move. Then you can press the space bar (pointing the robot) to let the robot move (if it doesn't move try to press the space bar pointing also the "Garden").
 


The Sweeper bot will begin to move randomly and sweeping out the balls.
You can change the probabilities that it moves up, down, left or right by adding/removing arrows in/from the "Garden" i.e. the Random Garden that drives the robot. In this way you can in real time drive the robot probabilistically.

Try to add as many balls as you like in the Robot's field (just bump balls on the white rectangle) and then let the robot run, and while it suns try add/remove arrows in/from the Garden in order to help the robot to sweepaway all the balls.

Programming the Sweeper Bot: beware of the bombs!

In this model both balls and bombs explode (i.e. disappear) when touched by the Sweeper Bot.

1. Try to "drive" the Sweeper Bot collecting all the balls but without touching any bomb
2. Modify the Garden so that when you let the robot run alone no bombs will explode.
1. do you think it is going to touch all the balls?
2. Does the movement of this modified Sweeper Bot recall the movement of some other Lego robot?
3. Describe your solution to the problem in terms of probability, if you want you can refer to past activities or to the theories your developed (if any).
3. Modify the Garden so that the Sweeper both is free to go anywhere, but so that when you let it run it will collect many balls and touch few bombs.
1. Describe your solution to the problem in terms of probability, if you want you can refer to past activities or to the theories your developed (if any).