CSF2 – Engineering and Programming Robotic Hands

Janeal Tyler, Computer Science Teacher

Students in Computer Science Foundations 2 have undergone the task of engineering a flex sensor glove that can control a robotic hand.  To learn more about the details of this project please read “CSF2 – Unit 5 Data and Analysis: Robot Hand.”  Students did this project in a few stages.  Their first stage was to build the flex sensor glove.  In a perfect world this glove would connect through a micro:bit to a computer using Excel.  The Excel sheet used with this project has a simulator that can track how each finger in the glove moves.  The second stage was to build a cardboard robotic hand where each finger is controlled by a servo motor.  Students had their gloves and robotic hands all completed, we plugged them into two Micro:bits, downloaded the premade program, and……nothing it didn’t work.  After investigating the the circuits, connections, Excel settings, we discovered the plug and play Micro:bit program didn’t work.  This didn’t stop the advanced students! We are now learning how to manually program the servo motors ourselves to get the robotic hands to work.  Stay tuned for our next chapter when we get all the servos to work.  If you would like to learn more about our next unit please read – “CSF2 – Unit 6 Micro:Bit Servos and Expansion Boards.”

Check out the pictures and progress of this project as students work on engineering their robotic hands by watching the video below:

 

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