Robots come to life
AUCKLAND PARK — Winter school programme opens the door to opportunities.
The first winter school programme at UJ in Auckland Park began on 6 July, welcoming students, staff and high school pupils alike.
The midday session commenced in the robotics lab with lecturer, Michael Ettershank teaching a basic robotics class. The group of enthusiastic geniuses comprised of adults from outside the university and one female Grade 10 pupil.
Iman Raffee from Greenside High School said, “It has been really fun. I do programming in school and this is just really interesting.”
Each person in the class was assigned with a basic ‘Stamp 2 Robot’, which they had to program and navigate through a maze without touching the walls. This may sound fairly easy but programming a robot takes quite some time and serious perseverance.
One student, who was studying accounting added that the extra class was an interesting challenge, but nothing he could not handle.
Ettershank said programming began with text because that gave the user more options.
“We start off with a basic stamp 2 robot that uses a version where all codes can actually be seen on screen, just to make it easier. Typically, you would refer to other libraries such as the PulsOut command, and that works the same as people with digital pulses.”
The end result of a fully functional robot was one that moved swiftly, and responded to commands.
