Students in Mr Andrews’ Robotics Club have made a start on the build of their PIC microcontroller car.
Microcontroller chips are already being used in vehicles to provide road intelligence, for example; automatic windscreen wipers. It is likely that the use of these systems will continue to increase in cars of the future.
A microcontroller is often described as a computer on a chip, it can be used as the ‘brain’ of a machine. It contains memory storage, a processor and input/output pins (for the connection of switches and sensors).
Our students will not only be creating the physical design of the microcontroller but they will be programming the functions (movement, steering and obstacle detection) themselves.
This is set to be a very interesting project, allowing the students involved to develop some programming skills that are increasingly relevant to modern life.
