Robots race at WHS in problem-based learning

A student kneels while her robot approaches the blue line in the hallway

May 27 2023

In one of the culminating activities in Jason Brown’s two Computer Science Essentials classes students were racing their self-driving robots down the hall during class to see if the robots did what they had coded them to do.

Students, a mix of ninth through 12th graders, participated in the race on April 19, 2023, with robots that had a “brain” and two wheels with separate propulsion. Students connected their robots to tablets to confirm their programming – created over weeks – was set. They made adjustments, and tested and retested their vehicles before the race started.

It was a drag race down a third-floor hallway at Washingtonville High School. The students were seeing if their robot was the fastest, stayed in a straight line, optically saw with vision sensors a blue line and turned around, and came back on its own to cross a red finish line and stop.

“It’s all about creating code,” said Mr. Brown. “I like this project because it is very much open-ended. I didn’t create any of the things the kids are doing in the drag race. They did. I gave them the ideas and the tools. This is all computer-generated code that they made in these robots.”

Computer Science Essentials is a Project Lead the Way elective course. Project Lead the Way courses follow a curriculum and are guided by a teacher, but they are more about problem-based learning by the students at their pace.

Gavin Kane, a ninth-grade student, signed up for the course because he thought it would be fun. Before the race, while testing his robot, he was working through some minor issues and programming. “It’s not doing exactly what I want it to do but it’s getting there,” he said. “All I really need it to do is to see the blue taped line, go over it and then reverse all the way back to this finish line. It sees the line but it doesn’t want to go over it and then reverse.”

Student Gavin Kane walks behind his robot during testing as Mr. Brown looks on

As for the course, he said, “It’s very fun. It can be very complex at times, but it’s very fun.”

In the class, Mr. Brown said, there is a lot of real-life discussion and learning that will help them in the next level, whatever that may be. “Even though we are doing a computer science class that is an elective there is a lot of real-world learning going on.”