Lesson Notes By Weeks and Term v4 - SHS 3

Lesson Video

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Performance objectives

• Identify key components of a robotic control system.
• Analyze a robot's performance to find flaws.
• Apply iterative testing to troubleshoot and improve a robot.
• Modularize a robotic solution for effective testing.
• Reflect on real-world robotics applications in Ghana.

Lesson summary

Welcome, future engineers and innovators! In our last lessons, we learned how to design and build robots. But as anyone who has ever tried to fix a faulty phone charger or a blender at home knows, things don't always work perfectly on the first try. In the world of robotics, this is not a failure; it is a normal and essential part of the process. Today's lesson is about becoming a "Robot Doctor." We will learn the systematic process of debugging and troubleshooting—finding out what’s wrong with a robot and fixing it. This skill of iterative improvement (trying, failing, fixing, and trying again) is what separates a basic builder from an expert roboticist.

Lesson notes

This lesson focuses on a core engineering principle: The Iterative Process. No complex system is perfect on the first attempt. The process looks like this:

Design ➔ Build ➔ Test ➔ Identify Flaws (Debug) ➔ Redesign/Fix ➔ Test Again... This cycle repeats until the robot performs as expected. A. The Systematic Troubleshooting Framework

When a robot isn't working, don't just randomly start changing things. A systematic approach saves time and leads to better solutions. We will use the 5 Key Questions framework, inspired by the NaCCA exemplars.

Question 1: What is the robot supposed to do? (The Intended Function) This is the starting point. You must have a clear goal. Example: "This robot is supposed to follow a black line on a white surface, moving forward at a steady pace."

Evaluation guide

• Go through a series of iterations to fix the identified flaws or improve the robot’s performance.
• Project-Based Learning: For a given non-functional attempted solution to a problem,
• a. What is the robot supposed to do?b. What does it actually do?c. Are the identified errors likely algorithmic, designs or programming flaws?d. Have you encountered these types of problems before? If yes, how did you fix it?e. Where and why do you think the errors occurred?
• Iteratively modularise the solution and test each sub-module until all the errorshave been tracked and fixed.