Making a wheeled robot

Abstract

Robotics had been a hot topic of research both locally and abroad. Many universities in the US and in Japan have setup their own robotics research laboratories and have encouraged their faculty members and researchers to do work on robotics.
In the Philippines, robotics research and related activities are gaining popularity. There are already high schools that offer robotic courses to their students. The experiences in robotics by students through the hands-on exercises they get from these courses help them a lot in their future careers in science, engineering, and technology.
There are regular robotics competitions in the Philippines sponsored by semiconductor companies that are open to students. As a matter fo fact, several students from the Philippines had already won Asian and international competitions in robotics. This was made possible by the early exposure of these students to robotics in their elementary and high school years.
The Physics Division at UPLB through its eager faculty members had become resource persons and adviser to high school students who had selected robotics as their research projects. These projects had been entered and won in the IntelDOST and DepEd science fairs. Some of our students' robots had also won awards in the National Inventors Week sponsored by the DOST Technology Application and Promotion Institute (DOST-TAPI).
Although high school students were able to make science projects in robotics and join the science fairs, majority of the burded of teaching them about robotics still rely on their external advisers from the universities such as UPLB. This is due to the fact that physics and technology high school teachers still lack even the basics of robotics design.
It is the aim of the workshop to introduce high school physics and technology teachers into robotics. Through hands-on exercises, they will learn the basics of building a simple wheeled robot, programming the wheeled robot to sense its environment and to move based on the acquired information.
The workshop will not make the participants expert in robotics, but will provide them enough experience so that they can advise and assist students in designing robots.