Your Invent! robot has a special demonstration mode with five pre-written demos. They are:

• Rescue the astronaut (movement & the magnetic pickup)
• Drawing demo (simple geometric shapes)
• Line-following (for following a race track)
• Obstacle avoider (using the 'face' sensor)
• Remote control (if you have the 'Robogames' remote)

These demos are great to show some simple things that Invent! can do. They're also useful for troubleshooting by demonstrating that the Invent! hardware is working correctly (particularly if a student is saying that their 'robot is broken!')

You're viewing an example of an instruction page available on our course documentation system. The tutorials that the students follow use this system.

Although this looks like a simple web page, it's been designed in a clever way that makes it easy to :

1. Save an offline copy (on a PC you can right-click and select 'Save As' and on a Mac you can use the 'File | Save as' menu option to save it as a standard 'html' web page file that you can copy to any computer). This means you can easily copy the instructions to machines that don't have an internet connection.
2. Make a printed copy (try doing a 'print preview' now on your machine and you'll see it's formatted so that teachers who want a paper copy can easily print their own - most browsers have an option to scale-down the printout or print multiple pages per sheet to save paper).
3. Can be easily translated (we're working on translations now of our documentation - contact us for more information).

This challenge uses:

• The drive module
• The main module
• The line-following sensor
• The astronaut badge

It's a simple program to go forward, turn around, and go back to the start, and it's one of the first challenges that you'll have to code in the tutorials.

There are both 'drag-and-drop' and 'Python' versions of the coding tutorials to suit all ages and experience levels.

The drive module is needed whenever we want to make the robot move (most of the time!) so we'll normally have this connected.

There are two plugs on the main module that push into two sockets on the drive module.

This is what it should look like so far

The line sensor is attached underneath the robot by pushing the plugs on the line sensor into the sockets underneath the main board.

Make sure all 8 pins align with the 8 holes in the socket before you press them in place!

This is what your robot should look like

The line sensor has a magnet underneath it. It will be used to 'collect' the astronaut ...

Hold down the button shown as you turn the robot on by pushing the slide switch down.

The robot should speak to you! It will say 'WiFi', then 'Access', 'Setup', and then 'Demo - Rescue'. When it says this, release the button. The status light should go white. This means you are in a demo mode.

Get the 'Mission to Mars' mat and place it on the table. If you have a silicone mat, put it underneath to stop it sliding about.

You could also use some sticky tape on the corners to do the same thing.

Place the astronaut at one side of Mars and the robot at the other as shown, and then press the button once. Your robot should move towards the astronaut, pick it up and return to base!

This magnetic pickup is a fun part of Invent! and adds a great tactile and audible feedback to let students know they have completed the challenges that use it.

It's easy to set more advanced challenges for some students by giving them more complex paths to follow and they'll know straight-away when they've completed the challenge correctly, as they'll have collected their astronaut.

The drawing robot needs the main board, the drive board, a piece of paper and a felt-tip pen. Like the previous demo, if you have a silicone mat, put it under the piece of paper. If not, you may want to try taping the corners of the piece of paper.

Like before, turn the slide switch on whilst holding down the button. This time, release the button when you hear the robot say 'Draw'.

Take the cap off the pen, and insert it so the nib goes through the small hole in the circuit board, and adjust the two white side clips so they are almost touching the sides of the pen.

N.B. The pen should not be gripped tightly as it is designed for the pen to slide down onto the paper - the force of gravity holds the nib against the paper.

Most common felt-tip pens should fit as long as they have a nib thin enough and long enough to poke through the small hole in the circuit board and go at least as far as the bottom of the black tyres.

Place the robot on the paper, and press the button to start drawing. It's programmed to draw three triangles, each slightly offset from the last.

This is what the drawing should look like.

As the robot can move precise distances and angles, it's great for learning about geometry and art.

You can set more advanced challenges that require the user to swap pens and press a button to create multi-coloured drawings.

For the next demo, you'll need the line sensor module attached in the same way as the 'Rescue the astronaut' demo above.

As before, turn the robot on whilst holding in the button. This time, release the button when the robot says 'Line'.

Place the racetrack mat flat on the table. If you have a silicone non-slip mat, put it under the racetrack. Otherwise, apply some pieces of sticky tape to the corners to stop the mat from moving.

Put the robot on to the black track, and press the button again to start. Your robot should move around the track.

N.B. You might notice that sometimes your robot might reverse direction or might move in a 'jittery' motion. The coding course material that students follow addresses these things and students are encouraged to identify and solve these problems themselves.

The line-following sensor allows hours of learning using different mats with both 'race-track' and 'maze' themes, and the tiny size of the robot means that students can rapidly test out new programs right on the desktop where they are working.

For the next demo, we'll need the obstacle sensor. This attaches to the top of the main control board.

Make sure that the 8 small pins go into the 8 holes in the sockets on the main board.

This is what it should look like when attached.

As before, turn the robot on whilst holding down the button. This time, release the button when the robot says 'Obstacle'.

When you press the button a second time, the robot should start moving forward until it detects an obstacle. The robot is programmed to always reverse away from the obstacle. Try putting your hand in front of either the left 'eye' or the right 'eye' and notice how it treats them differently.

The sensor you're using here is actually quite advanced and uses reflected infrared light. It can be used to detect the presence or absence of an obstacle but also in an 'analog' mode to estimate how far away an obstacle is.

The last demo allows the robot to be remote-controlled. This one will only work if you've got the 'Robo Games' kit that includes the remote-control unit shown in the next step.

As before, hold down the button whilst turning on, and release it when the robot says 'Remote'.

The remote control also has a demo mode. Because it doesn't have a speaker, it won't speak to you! However, it's still got the same sequence of lights as the robot ...

Hold down the button shown whilst turning on. The light next to the button should go red, green, yellow, and then finally white. When it is white, release the button. It's now in demo mode.

Your remote control has buttons on the left and right.

The buttons on the left control the direction. You can move the robot up, down, left and right.

The 'A' button on the right goes into 'turbo' mode. Hold this in whilst you are driving the robot, and it will move very quickly.

The 'B' button isn't programmed to do anything with this demo.

The remote control is a completely programmable board just like the main robot and can be programmed using drag-and-drop programming or Python. One of the challenges in the course is for students to write the 'transmitter' code for the remote control, and the 'receiver' code for the robot.

Invent! is designed to connect with Lego Technic pieces. Lego is great to add mechanical add-ons to your robot.

We like using inexpensive small kits that have a variety of parts. Kits like these can often be purchased for around USD $10, and have enough parts for several students to create add-ons for their robots.

Lego pins and bricks like this can be used to create a simple 'gripper' for playing games like capture the flag and robot football ...

Once you've made a simple gripper, you can use objects like table tennis balls to play robot football.

Objects that slide rather than roll are sometimes useful, particularly if you don't have a robot arena with side walls to play in. Things like small pots and cotton reels work well.

The remote control is actually a powerful computer module just like the one built into the robot itself. You can program it with both drag-and-drop coding and languages like Python.

Although we're using it here to move the robot around, the remote can be programmed for all sorts of tasks, such as controlling a sound and light display or even making a wireless doorbell.