About this video
A short, practical clip about a robot named Spout that keeps bumping into obstacles and failing to back up. The team adds electrical tape to the motor axles to raise friction against the table, which lets the robot reverse right away after a bump. The result is faster movement and better reaction to obstacles.
You'll be able to
- explain how friction at the motor axle affects whether a robot can back up
- predict the effect of a physical change on a robot's behaviour
- describe how to judge whether a fix has worked
Key words
- Friction
- The force that resists sliding between two surfaces, which here lets the motor axle grip the table.
- Axle
- The rod on which a wheel or motor turns, whose grip on the surface affects movement.
- Reaction
- How quickly and appropriately a robot responds to obstacles in its environment.
Transcript
After the last video, if you paid a lot of attention to why Spout wasn't backing up, you realize that it was because there wasn't enough friction between the axle of the motor and the surface Spout was running on. So we're going to apply some electrical tape to the axles of the motors to increase the amount of friction between the motor and the surface of the table – so when Spout bumps into something, he's able to back up right away.
So we should see an increase in both the speed of Spout’s movement and his ability to react to the environment around him. So let's see how much of a difference it's made. You can see he's frenetic now. He wants to get out really bad. He wants to go run and play.
So it definitely has improved his ability to react to the environment around him, and react to the obstacles he faces, and improve the speed at which he moves.
Video © Khan Academy, used under CC BY-NC-SA. Watch on Khan Academy. Puzzicle is not affiliated with Khan Academy.