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Are there ideas for this Brushbot?



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Leave this to help the Experts:
The activity can be viewed at: Build a Brushbot

Hi!

The main purpose of this project is to give you a simple look into robotics and get you started with making a circuit and getting something to move. It also lets you experiment with household items when doing this. If you've already assembled the basic circuit and got your brushbot to start moving around, there are further explorations you can try which are at the very bottom of this activity.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/stem-activities/brushbot

Something else you could try is experimenting with different motors and batteries to see what gives you the most speed. Or you could try to slant the bristles of the brushbot to help it move easily. Or, you could see how the brushbot moves differently on different surfaces (ex: the ground vs the grass)

If you have more experience with robotics/coding, here's a more advanced thing for you to try: experimenting with a microcontroller (essentially a small computer for programming things such as small robots) -- such as a Raspberry Pi or Arduino. In this way, you can program your robot to do certain tasks, even something like moving in a straight line so that the movements of the brushbot aren't random.

Let me know if you need any help with assembling the basic circuit or figuring out new ideas for this project!