Lesson Notes By Weeks and Term v4 - SHS 3
Robot Control Principles
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Robot Control Principles
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Subject: Robotics
Class: SHS 3
Term: 2nd Term
Week: 4
Grade code: 3.1.2.LI.2
Strand code: 1
Sub-strand code: 2
Content standard code: 3.1.2.CS.3
Indicator code: 3.1.2.LI.2
Theme: Principles of Robotic Systems
Subtheme: Robot Control Principles
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Welcome, future engineers and problem-solvers! In our daily lives in Ghana, we interact with systems that are supposed to work perfectly—from the traffic lights in Accra to the mobile money apps on our phones. But what happens when they don't? Today, we will become "robot detectives." We will learn how to look at a robot that isn't working correctly and figure out *why*. Is it a problem with its physical body, its "brain" (the plan), or the language used to give it instructions?
Before we can find faults, we need to understand the different ways a robot can fail. Think of building and operating a robot like cooking a meal using a recipe. The Recipe: The plan or steps to cook the meal (e.g., "First, chop onions. Then, fry them.") This is the Algorithm. The Ingredients & Tools: The physical items you use, like the pot, knife, stove, yam, and oil. This is the Design. The Written Instructions: The way the recipe is written down. A typo could ruin the dish (e.g., writing "10 spoons of salt" instead of "1 spoon of salt"). This is the Code.
If your Jollof rice comes out badly, was it because the recipe was bad (algorithm), your pot was broken (design), or you misread the recipe (coding)? We do the same analysis for robots. A. Functional Requirements
This is the starting point of any analysis. It is a clear list of what the robot is *supposed to do* to be considered successful. Definition: Functional requirements are the specific tasks, functions, or behaviours that a system (the robot) must be able to perform. Example: For a robotic arm designed to sort ripe and unripe tomatoes on a farm near Nsawam: It must pick up one tomato at a time without crushing it. It must use a camera and colour sensor to identify if a tomato is red (ripe) or green (unripe). It must place red tomatoes in a "ripe" bin. It must place green tomatoes in an "unripe" bin. It must complete this cycle in under 5 seconds.
If the robot fails at any of these tasks, it has a fault. Our job is to find out why. B. The Three Main Types of Flaws Design Flaw