When learning Robotics, it is imperative you use the correct terms.

To build a robot you need to know the correct names for the parts.

What is a driving gear, or a driven gear? How do gears work, what is "gear reduction"?

Students need to be able to choose appropriate gears to achieve desired speeds in their robots.  This lesson will introduce students to gear ratios and how they affect speed and torque.  Effects of different gear ratios will be demonstrated using small inexpensive robot kits.  Students will receive direct instruction on gear ratios and then use the information to choose the optimal gearing to complete a VEX robot.   Assessment will be on how well student robots perform in time trials (VEX is a specific brand of educational robot) This lesson can be modified to work with other educational robots by acquiring brand specific data.

In this lesson students will learn what each of the tools on the NXT Brick Interface are and learn how to identify each of the sensors. The sensors that they will learn in this lesson will be the Sound Sensor, Reflective Light Sensor, touch sensor and the Ultrasonic Light Sensor.

In this lesson students will take the information that they learned in the previous lesson "Get to Know Your Sensors" and put the sensors to work. Students will learn in teams of two how to use the buttons on the NXT brick (the brain of the robot) and learn how to read the icons on the display to program the robot to do 4 different challenges using 3 different sensors. The sensors that will be used in this lesson will be the Sound Sensor, Reflective Light Sensor, and the Ultrasonic Light Sensor.

In this lesson students will learn from one another about the different types of robots that exist today and the history of them.

Students will use the robots built in the Selecting Gears lesson and add encoders to the robots allowing the robot to input the number of revolutions of the motor to the software.  The software will then be modified to autonomously controll the distance travelled.

Optical encoders use infrared beams of light and a notched wheel to record on and off states.  this can be used to detect how fast an axel or shaft is spinning.  Using math calculations can be done to figure out how far a robot will travel for every rotation of an axel.  This lesson will demonstrate how to install the encoder, how to do the math, and how to program the robot to use the information

In this lessons students will learn how to properly calibrate the sensors according to the change in conditions. For instance if a room was very loud how could they calibrate the Sound Sensor to detect the sound of hands clapping. Additionally students will learn how to identify and configure each of the four sensor types in the 9797 Lego Mindstorm Kit.