Create a small obstacle course for Rovers to drive through while carrying cargo on top. Students need to program their Rover’s motors carefully to navigate the course with as much cargo on board as possible, a simple exercise to help students practise using motors and understand how to regulate speed.
Rover driving through an obstacle course with cargo on top
Setup
This exercise is about students learning that slow and steady often works better. To construct the course, we recommend placing books down for the Rover to drive over, try not to make the course too difficult. For cargo, common stationery works well; 3–4 items that all fit on the Rover is best. Avoid cargo that could be damaged if caught in the tracks.
Some Useful Blocks
Example code, different movement blocks
The correct answer for this challenge changes depending on the obstacle course. The blocks shown above are different ways to program a Rover to move and turn, we encourage students to experiment with different movement blocks to learn which ones are useful in which scenarios.
We let students use fixed-distance blocks in this exercise so they focus on choosing the right motor speed. You can add your own rules to introduce concepts like branching and iteration with sensors, depending on the obstacle course.
Continue Learning
Related resourceActivity: Roaming RoverLearn to avoid obstacles with the ultrasonic sensor.
Related resourceActivity: Driving ShapesLearn iteration and how to control the Rover’s motors.
