Robot Lab

This website contains instructional materials and photos from our robot program in the class PH 192 Introductory Physics Lab. Most of the students participating in this class are life science majors. An overview of this project appears in the following article:

Lowe, M.*, Moore, H., Langrall, E., and Gehrman, C. "Robots in the Introductory Physics Laboratory," American Journal of Physics 76, 895-902(2008). (*Corresponding author.)

Beginning in 1989 and ending in 2007, four lab periods of class PH 192 were dedicated to building robots, followed by a larger competition on a separate day. Prior to these robot labs, the students were introduced to basic circuit principles and the components necessary for building a robot. Some of these circuit activities can be found in the following files:

• Ohm's law and IV curves 
• Batteries in series 
• Switches 
• Voltage dividers, potentiometers, Wheatstone bridge, photocells 

The instructions for each of the four lab periods are shown below:

Day One:

• Instructions 
• Platform configuration  
• Component placement  
• Power switch 

Day Two Instructions

Day Three Instructions

Day Four Instructions

Competition: Track 

Two types of boards have been used in this program: the Scorpion HX and a power amplifier board that we designed. The following files contain information on the power amplifier board and augment what is described in the article indicated above:

• Photo of the power amplifier board (circuit diagram appears in the paper)
• Full circuit diagram for radio remote control using the power amplifier board 
• Instructional diagram of the power amplifier board 
• Instructional diagram for radio remote control using the power amplifier board 
• Instructional diagram for the line tracker using the power amplifier board   

Loyola shuttlebus robot	Barmaid robot	Students working during the lab
Christmas lights in tailpipe	Tetris robot	Students debugging their robot
Competition	Two batmobiles	Scorpion radio remote control
Shark robot	Robot arm with photocells	Ed and alien robot
Yellow shuttlebus	Ladybug robot	Voice robot
Tiger robot	Dino robot	Jones robot
Linetracker	Photocells for linetracker	Boat robot
Brown fork robot	House robot	Conestoga wagon robot
Servos for remote controle (Method 1)	Auto lights	Brown face robot
Yellow face robot	Magenta face robot	Red face robot
Scooby Doo robot	Alien message... "Take me to your lab teacher"	Fire robot
Camouflage robot	Elephant robot	Cheese robot
Chuck, two students, and two robots	R2D2 and radio remote control