Design a robot to draw lines on a pitch

Sketching an idea and writing a microcontroller program for the line painting robot to follow

This resource focusses on robotics engineering where learners design and write a program for a robot that could mark out the pitch lines for a game of football on the moon’s surface.

They will produce a labelled sketch of their idea and write a microcontroller program for the electronic aspects of the robot.

This is one of a series of resources that are designed to allow learners to use the theme of football on the moon to develop their knowledge and skills in Design & Technology and Engineering.

The teacher will introduce the theme of playing football on the moon and the challenges that would be faced when doing this, before explaining the robot design worksheet and task ahead to design and assemble their robot and then program it to complete the task assigned.

This activity is designed to take between 90-140 minutes.

Tools/resources required
Pens, pencils and coloured pencils
Crumble controller board and USB download cable
Three red crocodile clips and three black crocodile clips
Three AA batteries and battery pack
Two Crumble motors
Crumble software and computer hardware for programming

The engineering context
Electrical, electronic and control engineers need to have knowledge, understanding and skills associated with circuit design and assembly, and the programming of electronic control systems.

Travelling and potentially living on the moon presents all sorts of challenges for engineers to overcome. For example, how will we breathe, how will we cope with much lower gravity, how will we play sports and keep fit?

Suggested learning outcomes

By the end of this free resource students will be able to understand the challenges of living and playing football on the moon; be able to produce a labelled sketch of a design for a moon based pitch marker robot and be able to write a program for the electronics of the orbit, so it can mark out the pitch.

All activity sheets and supporting resources to design a robot are free online to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students’ and your schools’ needs.

The activity sheet includes teacher notes, guidance, useful web links, and links (where appropriate) to the national curriculum in each of the four devolved UK nations; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

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