Project Team: Benedict Fernando, Grady Haffey, Jack Mullaney, Brewer Daley, Dalton Vassallo

We came up with the idea to make two remote-controlled Mario Karts designed on 2 separate themes that would battle each other and try to pop the balloons located on each of the other's body frame. One of the Karts was designed to look like a Porcupine combined with the strength of a shuriken, a traditional Japanese concealed weapon that is generally used for throwing. The second Kart was designed to look like a Bumble Bee, agile and buoyant.

Our final product is a car with wings that flap, wheels that can be controlled, and LED lights that change color based on the control of the wheels.

Have you ever had a cool idea for a machine (a cylindrical rolling robot? a dragon that spits out popcorn? a sensor-driven robotic jellyfish?) that you wanted to make, but didn’t know how? They might say, “there’s an app for that,” but if it’s beyond the screen of your pre-packaged device, then there isn’t. So, what are you gonna do? Are you going to wait for some company to make it, are you going to give up, or do you want to do it yourself? The fact is, the tools do exist to get your idea into reality — and the secret is, they’re so easy to use, that any of you can do it. In ten days, we’ll show you how!

In this studio, students will learn the basics of electronics, microcontrollers and computer programming (using the Arduino environment).  They will also learn how to integrate the computer with external sensors (from simple switches and buttons to heat/temperature, light, gas, touch) and actuators (such as motors, lights, speakers, solenoids, valves, fans) to allow them to turn their ideas into sci-fi machines without having to depend on anyone else to do it for them! We will empower students with the physics (electricity and magnetism — booyah!), engineering, 3D modeling, robotics, and programming skills you need to bring your science fiction vision to reality!

Focus Skills/Subjects/Technologies:

  Design

  Physics (Electricity, Magnetism)

  Engineering

  Programming

  Electronics

   Robotics (Arduino, Sensors, Actuators)

   Digital Fabrication (Laser-cutting, 3d Printing)

   3d Modeling

Your "Final Post" should only show the final images and diagrams of your final project. 

Images: See slideshow above explaining the images required for the final post

Text: The text should answer the following questions:

• What is the main idea? This can be a 2-3 sentence "Elevator Speech"..
• What is the design problem? What are you trying to solve?
• Why is this project important?