Knowledge required
This activity assumes that students already know how to code color lights and the buzzer using webcode.
Materials required
- Expressing emotions slides
- Otto Starter robot
- Computers with internet and/or Bluetooth connection
Optional materials
- Expressing emotions worksheet
Learning Objectives
- Identify the key components of a robot and explain their functions.
- Recognize robotic systems in everyday life and be able to reason about how they help.
- Know that robots use algorithms to perform tasks.
- Write and upload programs that control the robot.
- Modify an existing program to add new functionality to the robot.
- Identify the problem to be solved and develop a plan to address it using the Otto robot components.
- Use an iterative design process to improve the robot’s performance.
- Create a project that combines robotics with another creative discipline.
How can robots express emotions?
Start the class with a small debate about this question. This debate can be as simple as allowing students to give ideas about how they would make their robot to express emotions or even talk about topics like the uncanny valley and how this affects the expressing features of robots.
Unboxing the components
As your first activity, you can do an unboxing/review the Otto Starter Kit box. This will help you make sure every student has all the required components to complete this lesson but also to build Otto in a future lesson. After checking we have all the components, ask your students to only keep out of the box the electronic components to test them.
Find emotions in video
As an optional activity, consider watching this video of Otto and asking your students to identify one or more emotions expressed by Otto in the video.
Activity: Expressing emotions
In this activity, students will be tasked with associating an emotive sound with a color and then with coding the components to play the sound and display the corresponding color.
For instance, the happy expression in the circle could be expressed with a code like this:
In this circle it is possible to see the name of the expression being represented. The ones on the slide don’t have the names as a mini challenge for students to figure out what each expression is.
If students are already familiar with the color lights and the buzzer components, this should be a straightforward activity. However, the real challenge lies in dealing with emotions such as anxiety and fear. As there are no default sounds to represent these emotions, the teacher will encourage students to be creative and design their own sounds to express these emotions in a robot. This exercise will foster their imaginative and problem-solving skills, adding a unique touch to their robots’ emotional expressions.
To create the sounds of these emotions, encourage students to combine multiple blocks to play musical notes from the blocks available in the sounds section:
Possible solution for the challenge: 9-1_emotions.otto
Here is a preview of the code:
Extra activities
If the activity results interesting for your students, consider exploring an extra challenge such as:
- Expressing extra emotions. Are there other emotions that we humans can express? Invite students to think about it and code color and sound for that extra emotion.
- Creating a new emotion. For more creativity, invite your students to create a new emotion. It could be individual or as a group activity.
In the 9-1_emotions.otto file we include an example of a new emotion called Ecliptic:
- The emotion a robot feels when it’s caught between curiosity and overload — when it senses something fascinating but too complex to fully process.
- It’s the edge between fascination and static — the “wow–wait–what–hold on” sensation of data awe.
- To a human, it would feel like watching a mesmerizing glitch: part wonder, part short-circuit.
Lesson Evaluation
- Students actively participated in the debate, sharing ideas on how they would make a robot express emotions.
- Students successfully associated emotive sounds with colors to express emotions.
- Students demonstrated creativity and problem-solving skills, especially when coding emotions like anxiety and fear where default sounds were not provided.
- Students showed a clear understanding of how to use both color lights and the buzzer to express emotions simultaneously.
- Teacher observed the successful integration of both technical skills (coding lights and sounds) and creative expression (emotional interpretation) in students’ work.
