ARPS Overview

ARPS (Arduino®-compatible Robot Project Shield) is beginner-friendly add-on shield for the popular Arduino UNO R3 and Arduino UNO R4 circuit families. ARPS is designed to help new learners focus on rapidly developing their programming and interfacing skills without the typical slowdowns associated with assembling, debugging, and reassembling breadboard circuits. A complete set of freely distributable learning activities uses common electronic circuits and devices built into ARPS to lead beginners through learning microcontroller fundamental programming concepts. After mastering the basics, learners can continue to apply their skills to build and program a number of different types of simple robots using just the parts incorporated into ARPS.

ARPS Hardware

The ARPS circuit hardware is designed to be easy for novices to build, and specifically addresses some of the challenges facing schools, tech clubs, robot camps, and makerspaces. Through-hole components are used exclusively, making it easy for beginners to build their own ARPS circuits and learn about electronic components and soldering, without having to deal with tiny USB connector pins or surface mount parts. ARPS can be assembled in a number of configurations which allow it to be customized for specific applications or grade levels, while reducing overall costs by not populating unneeded circuits or devices.

ARPS Educational Starter Configuration

The simplest, lowest cost ARPS configuration adds four user pushbuttons, four user LEDs, a piezo speaker, and an analog temperature sensor to Arduino UNO, as well as an additional power LED and RESET button to make it easier use the Arduino with the ARPS shield attached. All five introductory learning activities are designed to use only the parts in the Educational Starter configuration, allowing students to assemble this ARPS configuration quickly, and at a lower cost than a full build.

The Educational Starter configuration uses a minimum number of components and still enables learners to advance through all five introductory learning activities.

Simple Robot Configuration

After completing the introductory programming activities using the Educational Starter configuration, learners can add the motor driver, power supply voltage divider, and screw terminal strip to their ARPS board to control two DC motors in forward and reverse, four uni-directional DC motors, or a stepper motor. IR LEDs and phototransistors can be added to the snap-off line and floor sensor modules to make ARPS into a simple line-following robot, or a bumper-based robot with floor and battery level sensing.

Sumo Robot/Advanced Configuration

A small expansion header allows for the addition of up to four servos or an ultrasonic SONAR distance sensor module, enabling learners to make ARPS into an obstacle sensing or Sumo robot. Adding the optional IR demodulator enables students to learn about data transmission and to create a remote-controlled robot, too, giving more advanced learners lots of capabilities to explore.

Fully-assembled ARPS mounted on an Arduino UNO R4 Minima. ARPS has its floor sensors detached and an ultrasonic SONAR distance module installed in its expansion header socket and is ready to be built into a robot.

ARPS Courseware and Learning Activities

A set of five introductory learning activities as well as a number of advanced activities and starter project examples are being developed for ARPS, and the programs for all of these are freely available in the mirobotech GitHub repository and on the ARPS website. Both the ARPS starter circuit, as well as the full ARPS circuit are also available in the Tinkercad circuit simulator, including all of the programming activities from the learning activities (see the ARPS webpage for the full list of learning activities). The introductory learning activities include:

Introductory Activity 1 - Input and output (including ‘if’ and simple Boolean logic) [GitHub] [Tinkercad]

Introductory Activity 2 - Variables and constants (including a simple game) [GitHub] [Tinkercad]

Introductory Activity 3 - Loops (including PWM) [GitHub] [Tinkercad]

Introductory Activity 4 - Functions [GitHub] [Tinkercad]

Introductory Activity 5 - Analogue input (including serial output and debugging techniques) [GitHub] [Tinkercad]

ARPS and its shared public domain learning activities can be fully simulated in Tinkercad.

Each introductory learning activity is designed to lead learners through a guided exploration of important programming concepts using both fun and useful program examples. The goal of the first few learning activities is to introduce the Arduino language syntax and program structure by targeting hardware I/O, making flashing light patterns and sounds in Activity 1, creating a rapid-clicker game in Activity 2, and implementing PWM to control LED brightness in Activity 3. Initially focusing on hardware control provides learners with purposeful coding tasks and immediate feedback, helping to channel their curiosity while building their software knowledge and coding abilities. Each learning activity consists of code examples, Program Analysis Activities to help beginners learn new skills and develop a coding mindset, and Programming Activities that enable learners to extend their learning to create their own related programs.

The planned advanced learning activities will guide learners in the creation of SONAR functions, servo functions, NeoPixel functions, and IR data transmitting and receiving techniques.

Example starter programs are available for simple line-following robots [GitHub] [Tinkercad] and beginner Sumo robots [Github] [Tinkercad] to help new learners to build their first program and conceptualize solutions without becoming overwhelmed.

Open Software and Learning Materials

The ARPS software and lesson activities are free and open for anyone to use and re-mix. As a high school computer technology teacher I had great success integrating activities like these into my classes and I'm happy to have everyone, especially other teachers and students, benefit from my experiences. All of the ARPS programs stored in GitHub are open source software licensed under the terms of the MIT license. All of the ARPS learning materials on the mirobo.tech website are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. The ARPS circuit activities are shared as public domain circuits in Tinkercad.