Case R25: Automatic Hand Washing Machine

Complexity
  • Medium – Advanced
Target Level
  • P3 – P6

Objective:
To offer hands-on building experience and programming learning opportunities to the senior students. In response to the impacts of Covid-19 upon our daily life in Hong Kong, it is encouraged develop the hygiene awareness, as well as the problem-solving minds, of our students through coding learning. Specifically, the primary school students will be taught and equipped to create an automatic hand washing machine on their own.

Description:
The students are guided to build up the basic parts of an automatic hand washing machine by using the specifically designed plastic building blocks. At a second stage, the students will be provided with a microcontroller board and then proceed with the fundamental knowledges of coding to create, design, and adjust the programming parts of a hand washing machine.

A series of coding learning workshops will be organised, aiming at inspiring the students to apply some basic coding technologies to their own hand washing machine. For example, the workshops will touch on various interesting coding elements that are commonly applied to the construction of an automatic machine, like servo motor, IR Photo reflector and so on. In this way, students are expected to design, build, program, and adjust a hand washing machine. In this process, students are also expected to have a hands-on experience of inventing a problem-solving device.

Hardware
  • Programmable robotics
  • Sensors
  • Plastic building blocks
  • Tablet / Laptop / PC with Internet connection
Software
  • Common programming languages like Python / Scratch / C++
Cloud Services
  • N/A
Major Activities
  1. Theoretical session covering:
    1. Basic introduction to robotics
    2. The characteristics and scope of technology
    3. Develop an understanding of engineering design.
  2. Practical session covering:
    1. Understanding the structure of robots
    2. Getting accustomed to how robots move
    3. Programming robots
    4. How to employ sensors to automate robots
  3. Share the challenges and lesson learnt
Learning Objective(s)
  • How to collaborate in groups and teams
  • How to design an automatic machine
  • How to use the programming software
  • Learn how to control and adjust the programmable parts in an automatic hand washing machine
  • Develop problem-solving capacity
  • Enhance hygiene awareness
Duration
  • Theoretical session: 4 hours
  • Practical sessions: 8 hours
Target No. of Students
  • About 10 - 20 students per workshop