Zero to Hero in Vex Robotics

From the bare basics towards mastery of motor functions and feedback control

Why Vex Robotics?

VEX Robotics is the ultimate robotics platform: powerful micro-controller (ARM® Cortex®) together with high power high torque motors, precise sensors and a metal frame. Best of all it is programmed in a very user friendly interface (CodeBlocks) using Robot C which is essentially the C programming language with a host of new robotics related functions. 

What is special about this course?

In the first module students complete several quite advanced examples of INPUT / OUTPUT programming whereby they control the speed and the direction of a motor by bringing their hand closer to and further from a distance sensor. This task is broken down into the simplest possible steps; in each step students add two to three lines of code, experiment with changing variables and observing the output of the robot. This ensures that they understand not only what each line of code does, but how it does it and what will happen when it changes.

In the second module students create functions that move the robot forward and backward a precise number of degrees. They also learn to control the robot arm, performing both grabbing and lifting. The module contains key concepts like booleans, while loops and various varieties of functions. 

In the third module student learn how to follow lines both using a basic Zig Zag algorithm and a much more advanced proportional algorithm which uses a sensor feedback loop. They also use fedback to create a program which gets the robot to keep constant distance between itself and the nearest object. 

In the fourth module students apply everything they learned into two advanced tasks, the first of which is to follow a line and pick up cans along the way taking them to the bin at the end of the line. The second is an environment scanner which looks for rubbish (cans) , picks them up and drops them off at the bin.