Neanderthal Robot Food Forager
– Finding Food!
In ancient times, Neanderthals did not grow crops and they had to
find all their food in the forests. They travelled each day foraging
for food – if they could not find any, they came home hungry that
day! Life would be a lot more difficult for them than for us, as we
can go down to the corner shop for food – much more convenient!
Since Neanderthals died out in Europe about 30,000 years ago, we
don’t really know what they looked like, but some scientists think
they look something like the image above.
What sort of food did Neanderthals eat? We know from looking at
burial sites that they ate berries. Some scientists think they ate
fish too, perhaps netting it like the human fisherman below.
Most scientists think Neanderthals also enjoyed honey, gathering it
in the forest like the South American Indian pictured below.
Honey was the only sweet food available to tribal people, and so it
was much treasured, but gathering honey was dangerous – the bee’s
hives were often high in the trees, and rotten branches could mean
that Neanderthals could fall and break bones – to say nothing of
being painfully stung by the bees.
Robot Food Foraging…
Real food foraging sounds fun – as long as you took your lunch with
you and did not have to depend on eating only what you found,
because finding food in the forest can be difficult, and you can
often go hungry at the end of the day. So as not to be hungry, let
us try food foraging using Robots.
The Forest
We will imagine the forest is like the arena above. The blue central
area will be the forest containing berry bushes (a blue forest? –
you need a good imagination for this challenge!). The white area
surrounding the forest will be a stream containing fish. The black
area around the arena will be a cliff—go beyond that and your
imitation Robot Neanderthal will fall to his or her death!
The Food
The green cups in the middle of the blue forest will be pretend
berry bushes that our Robot forager will have to gather and take
back to the home square where it started from.
We can imagine the fish in the stream to be the transparent cups in
the white stream between the blue forest and the black cliff edge.
Just as in real life fishing is more difficult than gathering
berries, so gathering the transparent cups representing fish and
bringing them back home may be more difficult than collecting
berries.
In real life, gathering honey from a bee hive high in a tree or high up a
cliff edge is dangerous and difficult. So, just as in real life,
gathering the red cup representing honey may be the most difficult
of all. Can you collect the red cup that is right on the cliff edge
and bring it back home, without falling over the cliff edge and
dying? You are going to try? Good luck! There will be much rejoicing
in your tribe if you can bring all that sweet honey back home…
Where Do We Place the Food?
The green berry bushes go in the blue forest. The transparent fish
go in the white stream. The red honey hive goes on the black cliff
edge. Talk to you teacher or mentor and agree just where to place
each of these food items.
Building Our Robot Forager.
A smaller robot may be an advantage when trying to gather the fish
and honey – a large one may fall over the cliff edge. If you still
have the small Robots you used in the Floor Cleaner Challenges, they could
be a good place to start.
The next thing to decide is how your Robot Forager will detect the
food. A touch sensor might do, but check how heavy the cups are, are
they too light to operate a touch sensor? Could we use a light sensor
pointing forward to detect them? Could we use an ultrasonic (sonar)
sensor? Should we use more than one sensor? So many possibilities…
Robot Food Foraging Rules
I don’t know of any official rules for Neanderthal Robot Food
Foraging, so we can make up our own rules. Let us start our Robot
foraging trips from the bottom left-hand corner of the arena shown above.
Your Robot will aim to gather as much food as possible in 2 minutes,
without falling over the edge of the cliff and dying.
Since the berry bushes are the easiest to collect, we could score 1
point for each berry bush your Robot finds and touches, changing to
2 points if your forager brings it back to the dark blue home square
for the tribe to eat. Fish are harder, so perhaps we could score 2
points for each fish found and touched, which could change to 4 points if your Robot can bring the
fish to the home square. Honey is very difficult, so perhaps 4 points could
be given if your Robot manages to touch the honey, changing to 8
points if your Robot manages the remarkable feat of bringing the
honey back to your home square for your tribe to enjoy.
Discuss how you would like to score these food gathering trips with
your mentor or teacher. Together, you can change any of these rules
any way you like, you can even make up rules that are completely
your own – the main purpose is to have fun while learning about
robotics!
Teaching your Robot Forager.
Think about how you want your Robot Food Forager to find the food.
What is the easiest way to instruct your robot to collect the food
items? What
should your Robot do if it detects food? Will it be able to tell
what sort of food it has found? Which sensor would be best? Would
your robot need more than one sensor, or would just one be best?
Is the easiest way the best way, or are some more complicated
ways better?
Competing?
If you wanted to have a competition:-
-
Agree before the Robot Neanderthal Forager Food Gathering Trips where to
place the food.
-
If several Forager Robots are competing against each other, the
food should be in the same position for each different Robot
foraging trip.
-
The best Robot could be the one that scores the most food
points in 2 minutes.
-
If two Robots bring back the same number of food points, the
result is a draw.
-
If the best robot can not be decided after 2 rounds of a
foraging, a third foraging contest with a longer time limit
could be held, with the Robot that accumulates the greatest
number of food points being considered the best imitation Robot
Neanderthal Food Gatherer. If the score is the same after, say,
4 minutes, the contest could be declared a draw.
-
If a Robot Food Gatherer falls over the cliff and dies, that is
the end of that food gathering trip – however all is not lost
because the village witch
doctor can bring your Robot back to life and you can then have
another food gathering trip when it is your Robot’s turn next
time!
To a
Go build your imitation Neanderthal Food Gatherer!
Have Fun!
Enjoy!