Course Guide¶
The Finch Drama Project is a workshop curriculum for creating dramatic performances using small mobile robots. This is the reference guide containing course tutorials and exercises. It is written to be accessible to middle-school students, but could be used at a variety of levels.
We are using the Finch Robot platform sold by BirdBrain Technologies, although the core ideas could be ported to other devices. We are using the Snap! visual programming system.
The Finch Drama Project was started in January 2016 by Dr. Garth Zeglin as a project of the Personal Robotics Lab within the Robotics Institute and School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Contents¶
- Introduction
- Exercise - Moving Like a Robot
- Exercise - Interacting Like Robots
- Exercise - Review of Snap!
- Exercise - State Transition Diagrams
- Exercise - Sensorless Parking
- Exercise - Building a Tiny Narrative
- Exercise - Creating Animation Primitives
- Exercise - Network Communication
- Exercise - Robot Synchronization
- Exercise - Developing the Production Theme
- Exercise - Developing the Storyboard
- Notes on Snap! Sample Code
- Standard Snap Blocks Reference
- Drama Library Blocks Reference
- Videos
Quick Start¶
The fastest way to jump into the materials with a Finch Robot is to try out the example programs (‘sketches’) listed below. They will load the browser-based Snap! programming system.
Technical Requirements¶
To run the examples, you will need:
- a Finch Robot with USB cable
- a computer running the Chrome browser (Windows, OS X, Linux, or Chromebook)
- the Chrome Finch Connection App
- an active network connection
The best detailed instructions on getting started are found at Finch Chromebook Support. Please note that these examples will not work with the BirdBrain Robot Server as it uses an incompatible system for communicating between Snap! and the robot.
Snap! Sketches¶
These work best in the Chrome browser:
- State Machine
- Network Communication
- Sensorless Parking
- Robot Synchronization
- Robot Sequencing
- Precise Coordination
- Drama Library
- Box Navigation
BirdBrain also hosts several other curriculum examples using Snap and Scratch.
License¶
The text content of the Finch Drama Project by the Carnegie Mellon University Personal Robotics Lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://personalrobotics.github.io/finchdrama/.
Garth Zeglin, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University