BOE–Bot is short for Board of Education robot. It is the trade name of a robot kit that is used in college and high school robotics classes. It consists of a main circuit board (the Board of Education), a plug–in microcontroller, two small servo motors to drive the wheels, a bread board and a small aluminum chassis that all the parts bolt onto. Students frequently use erector set parts, lego blocks, and additional servos to build custom projects.
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The green detachable main circuit, mounted on the top of the robot and visible in the picture is called the Board of Education . The microcontroller which plugs into a socket on the green circuit board is called the BASIC Stamp . The BASIC Stamp is programmed in PBASIC. The rear wheel is a drilled polyethylene ball held in place with a cotter pin. Wheels are machined to fit precisely on the servo spline and held in place with a small screw. The BASIC Stamp is extremely easy and flexible to program.[1] The Boe–Bot is small, approximately four inches wide, and runs on four AA batteries. It is well documented and affordable.[2]
The Boe–Bot can be adjusted to walk on six legs, sense objects, or pick up things by adding extra pieces sold by Parallax Inc. These include additions like the PING sensor.
One advantage to the Boe–Bot is that there is no soldering required.[3]
The robot may be programmed to follow a line, solve a maze, follow light, or communicate with another robot. Input/output (I/O) projects can be built on the breadboard which is usually sufficient to hold anywhere from 2–4 components — LEDs, Resistors, ICs etc.). Mounting holes and slots on the chassis may be used to add custom robotic equipment. The BOE–Bot is programmed using the PBASIC language.
The Boe–Bot is a robot that can be used in a variety of ways including combining Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio software with the Boe–Bot to control the robot's movements.[4]
Dr. Estelle M. Eke is an important proponent of the BOE–bot. Students in her classes at Sacramento State University use it as a starting point to build their class robotics projects.[5] The Boe–Bot was originally developed by Professor Chuck Schoeffler of the University of Idaho Industrial Technology Education program. The Boe–Bot robot is marketed by Parallax, Inc. as an educational kit for their "Stamps In Class" program.
The Boe–Bot is known in classrooms for being a child and young adult-friendly robot. It can be assembled by students as young as twelve and it teaches the PBASIC programming language.[6]
This robot requires no previous experience and is constructed from high-quality parts.[7]
The Boe–Bot is used in many universities including: the University at Buffalo's Mechatronics Program[8] and the California State University, Sacramento's College of Continuing Education's Mechatronics Program.[9] The California State University Fresno, uses the Boe–Bot in their Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering Laboratory course.[10] The Game Institute uses the Boe–Bot Robot kit in their Introduction to Robotics course.[11] Parallax has built custom kits for mechatronics courses and provided them for various universities including California State University, Sacramento, Shasta College and Louisiana Tech University.[12]
While the Boe–Bot is featured in many Parallax workbooks it was also Experiment #116 in the book "123 Robotics Experiments for the Evil Genius" by Michael Predko.[13]
The Boe–Bot and its separate add-ons and accessories are carried by a variety of electronics distributors including: RobotShop Distributors Inc., RadioShack, Digi-Key, and SparkFun Electronics.
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