Robotics¶
Teaching material for the robotics lesson of Part 2: AI & Science — "A rover learning on an exoplanet". Students program a micro:bit rover with an AI co-pilot: first calibrating basic movement, then building a Q-learning grid simulation, and finally deploying it on a Cutebot.
Lesson material¶
Which version do I need?
The student version is the worksheet you hand out. The teacher version is the same lesson including the worked answers, for your own preparation.
Backup and solution files are a last resort
Give a group the backup/solution files below only if they are genuinely stuck after trying with the AI co-pilot first — struggling productively with the AI is the point of the lesson.
Assignment 1 — Calibration¶
Backup solutions for the three calibration tasks (drive forward, turn 90°, walk a square). Copy-paste only as a last resort.
Assignment 2 — RL grid¶
What students receive
Code_RL_grid_TO_ANNOTATE.docx is the file to print and hand to
students: the RL grid code with blank space for them to annotate each
block. Everything else in this section is a backup or teacher resource.
- Code_RL_grid_TO_ANNOTATE.docx — print and hand to students
- Code_RL_grid_SOLUTION.docx — the same code, with the explanation filled in (for you).
- RL_leds_3x3.hex — ready-to-flash version, in case a group's python.microbit.org save fails.
- RL_grid_BACKUP_SOLUTION.py — the plain source, as a copy-paste backup.
Q-values notebook¶
A notebook with pictures and a simulation of how Q values evolve throughout learning — useful to walk through with the whole class.
Click Open in Colab to run it in your browser without installing
anything, or download the .ipynb file to run it locally.
| Run it | Download |
|---|---|
 |
.ipynb |
Assignment 3 — Cutebot¶
- cutebot.py — required library; add this to the micro:bit project before the RL code.
- RL_cutebot.hex — ready-to-flash version of the full RL + line-following Cutebot code, in case a group's save fails.
- RL_cutebot.py — the plain source, as a copy-paste backup.