This is Part 1 of a workshop series lead by Viansa Schmulbach on creating a spider terrain robot using 8 servo motors. During this first 2 hour workshop, you will learn how to control servo motors using Arduino software (Download the software here). This workshop is free and open to the public from 5th graders and up. No coding experience is required; we’ll teach you what you need to know. What I ask is that you please bring a laptop!
If you plan on attending this workshop, please download the Arduino software at this link: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

This workshop will be held at the Los Altos Library, on March 8 from 10:15AM-12:30PM.

Schedule:

10:15-10:30AM Arrival
10:30-11:00AM Introduction to terrain robot project
11:00-11:30AM C++ (coding) Tutorial
11:30-12:30 Moving a servo

About the terrain robot project:

The goal of this project is to design a terrain robot which moves like a spider.  
This process of taking a biological entity or process and turning it into a design is called “biomimicry.”  It’s basically recognizing that nature is the most powerful thing in this world, and we should take inspiration from it.  I first learned the concept in around 8th grade when I purchased a book called Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Biomimicry allows us to have a greater appreciation for the environment and our humble role within it.

It’s a terrain robot.  Terrain robots have several purposes; for example, search and rescue missions, environmental exploration and research.  However, most of them require a slight bit of autonomy in the case of temporarily lost connections. This robot should become semi-autonomous, and I’d probably incorporate a bit of AI into it, either vision processing or some type of graph search like A* for the shortest path. AI robots (not specifically terrain) have an incredible amount of uses, such as assistive robots in homes, manufacturing, and more research!