How does a Robot think?

The Robot Brain

Video

This video explains what a robot is, with examples of early robots. If you watched it at the start of the course, skip ahead to the robot brain.

The robot Brain

• Most robots have a computer or micro-controller to perform the instructions from the program
• The ‘brain’ could just be a simple circuit, without a central processing unit (CPU)

• Common microcontrollers include:

  • BBC micro:bit
  • Raspberry Pi Pico
  • Arduino Uno
  • NodeMCU (ESP8266)

A robot “thinks” by running its program in a loop, over and over, many times a second:

1. Sense: read the sensors (how far away is that wall?)
2. Think: decide what to do (it’s close, so turn)
3. Act: drive the motors

This sense, think, act loop is at the heart of almost every robot, from a SMARS to a self-driving car.

A BBC micro:bit. Visit https://www.microbit.org for more about this amazing device.

Check your understanding

What’s next

Congratulations on finishing Robotics 101! Now build your first robot:

• Build a SMARS Robot: a 3D-printed tracked robot
• Build your own BurgerBot: a Raspberry Pi Pico robot you program in MicroPython
• Learn MicroPython - The basics

You can use the arrows  ← → on your keyboard to navigate between lessons.