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The Arizona STEM Acceleration Project

Sensor Integrated Movement (Taking Flight)

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Sensor Integrated Movement (Taking Flight)

A 7th grade STEM lesson

Scott Blevins

Amanda Sibley

3/23/2024

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Notes for teachers

Today is the day! Today the drones with take flight and will navigate based on sensor input! The importance of the last couple of days should not be downplayed. When working with hardware, the drone, errors can lead to financial cost (breakage), or even physical harm. It is critical that before code is testing that it is vetted to avoid as many foreseeable mistakes as possible. As students develop their programing skills they may be able to advance through this stage more quickly but revision is the process of programming.

Developing Predictive Models: Click here

Error Sources and Sensor Integration: Click here

Sensor Integration: Click here

Loops and Logic: Click here

Sensor Integrated Movement: Click here

Sensor Integrated Movement- Taking Flight: Click here

List of Materials

Charged drone
Charged controller
USB connection cable
Computer for programming

Notes and Materials:

Today the students will develop the final code they want to deploy to their drone through Blockly Senior. Based on space requirements students can split up responsibilities of developing the code, setting up the maze and navigation implements, and making sure that the drone is charged and prepared for flight. When the students are ready to test this code make sure that either a student or the teacher has their hand on the keyboard of the computer to stop the program if need be.

After first flight have students make note of what worked well and what didn’t work well on their first flight. Student teams are welcome to improve on their code but encourage students to make only one modification at a time. Young programmers will often make several changes at once and if this does not solve all problems, or if it creates new problems, it can be very hard to identify what created the issue. Making one small change at a time and keeping a log of the effect of the change is an important practice to encourage. If you are able to have one adult per group on this day acting as the one who directs students to record their changes and to show restraint in their modification process that would be ideal.

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Standards

Arizona Science Standards

Science and Engineering Practices:

Develop a model

Develop a model that allows for the manipulation of a proposed object, tool, process or system

Using mathematics and computational thinking

Apply concepts of ratio, rate, percent, basic operations, and simple algebra to scientific and engineering questions and problems.

Arizona Mathematics Standards

7.RP.A Analyze proportional relationships and use them to solve mathematical problems and problems in real-world context.

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Objective:

Students will be able iteratively improve on their code as they seek to navigate a drone through their maze based on sensor integration alone.

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Agenda (1 Day)

Students will assemble their maze and field elements and will deploy their code to the drone to navigate the maze.

Students will make note of what works well about their program and what need to be improved upon. Students will make one change at a time and will re-deploy the code to the drone to see if they can improve on the effectiveness of their code.

Students will need to keep a log of what they are encountering as problems and how they are taking steps to improve effectiveness.

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Intro/Driving Question/Opening

How can I develop a code that will seek input from on board sensors and successfully navigate a maze?

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Hands-on Activity Instructions

Students will work in their maze small groups. Groups will write their code and deploy the code. Groups will then work to revise their code to try to optimize the functionality of the code.

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Assessment

The students will deploy their code and will improve on the functionality of their early draft through systematically fine tuning the operations of the drone.

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Differentiation

Pair small groups based on ability- stronger peers with those who are struggling.

Remediation

Extension/Enrichment

Ask students who are getting the hang of it to create a cheat sheet. Take the best cheat sheet and give to groups in following lessons to serve as memory aids (remediation).