Back to Artemis III: Living and Working on the Moon
Artemis III – Lesson 5: ROV-ing Under the Moon
Lesson Summary
Video coming 9/20!In this lesson: students will begin by exploring how they use their senses to navigate their environment and learn about NASA engineers’ use of biomimicry in robot design. Next they will learn about pseudo code and create instructions for a robot to follow a specific path. Next students will investigate how to use ultrasonic sensors to program a robot to travel autonomously through a lunar lava tube (tunnel with 90 degree corners). Students will build a flexible lava tube course and use it to test their robot. Finally, students can also learn how to plot transmitted RGB values measured by their robot to create a map of the color of the surface of the lava tube.
Estimated Instructional Time: 8.5 hours
Lesson Level Question: How can we successfully design, build, and program robots to move through and work in lava tubes on the Moon?
Engage
Students will begin by discussing how they use their senses to navigate their environment. Next, they will learn how NASA engineers use biomimicry to inspire the design of their robots.
Explore
Students will produce instructions for a robot driving along a provided path. Next, a matching game will help students understand how to translate their instructions to code and, for middle and high school students, MyBlocks.
Explain
Students will translate the list of instructions they wrote in the Explore section into block code and attempt to drive the course.
Elaborate
Students will learn how to use the ultrasonic sensor to program their robot to avoid hitting a wall and to sense corners and turn in the correct direction. Next students will build flexible segments of a lava tube test course to refine their rover design and program.
Evaluate
Students will evaluate how well they designed and programmed their robot by sending it through a lava tube robotics course.
Extend
Students will learn how to plot data transmitted by their robot and use the data to make a map of their lava tube. Artemis ROADS III challenge teams will document their work by meeting the deliverables outlined in MO-5.
Standards Alignment
Each lesson includes standards alignment information for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Many lessons also include information on alignment opportunities for: CCSS Mathematics, CCSS English, WA State Learning Standards in Computer Science, WA State Standards in Social Emotional Learning.
In these documents, you will find an alignment summary, followed by details for each lesson: