Smart Car Projects, videos, and more!

Students spent two units building, programming, and learning about their robotic smart cars.  With their smart cars the built upon their knowledge of expansion boards, servos, and programming to add infrared sensors and ultrasonic sensors to their repertoire.

Infrared Sensors

With the infrared sensors students learned about motion detectors such as safety features with garage doors, security systems, and more.  The studied the difference between visible light spectrum and how infrared light can’t bee seen my the human eye.

Here is an example of a student project programing the visible light spectrum with their smart cars:

Project by Atiyanna Char – Mitchell High School student

Here is another project of a student programming visible light spectrum.  Students could choose different ways to display their understanding of how lights and programming worked in their smart cars.

Project by Alexis Secundino Zuniga – Mitchell High School Student

Here is an overview of the the infrared projects that everyone in the class participated in:

Ultrasonic Sensors

Next students tackled ultrasonic sensors.  These sensors are used in everyday objects such as back up cameras in cars along with other safety features in cars.  With this project students had to design and build a maze using cardboard.  Then they had to program their cars to avoid obstacles.  Their cars weren’t expected to complete the maze, instead it was supposed to turn and find a path around objects.  Students learned very quickly the limitations of having only a single sensor that was smaller than their car.  Many times their car’s wider tires got stuck on obstacles the sensor though they had avoided.  This lead into great conversations about computational innovations that have revolutionized aspects of our culture and how they might need evolve.

Here is an example of a student project:

Project by Atiyanna Char – Mitchell High School student

Check out the video below to see students working the second stag of our smart car projects.

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NONDISCRIMINATION COMPLIANCE COORDINATOR Katherine Ritchie Rapp, Equal Opportunity Programs and Ombudservices 711 East San Rafael Street, Colorado Springs, CO 80903-2599
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