After first semester's exhausting finals, Wellesley College kindly grants us one month of wintersession which can either be taken as a nice and relaxing winter vacation or as a great opportunity to do something exciting. It turns out that all three of us wanted to take something outside of our majors that's fun and challenging, thus we decided that building robots was the way to go.
This intensive introductory Robotic Design Studio class, taught by Robbie Berg (Physics) and Franklyn Turbak (Computer Science), allows students to design and assemble robots out of LEGO parts, sensors, motors, and miniature computers (Handy Boards and Crickets developed at the MIT Media lab).
First half of the course is designed to allow students to gain a familiarity with the programming coding sequence and building concepts, and intriguing challenges that require combinations of theory and practice are completed. See past assignments for more details. Second half of the course is devoted to the robot project, as this web page is dedicated to explain the entire process of creation.