Mr. Heise
Breaking News: Our Cars Operate Autonomously
In Robotics this week, our students achieved a major breakthrough: the self-driving line-tracer cars can move under their own power.
After several rounds of testing, we discovered that the issue preventing the cars from moving correctly stemmed from an integrated circuit that had been installed backwards. The students took full ownership of the repair. They carefully unsoldered connections, tested each motor directly on a battery, tested LEDs, made a flow chart of where the error must be—found it—and methodically reassembled the systems. Along the way, one motor began running in reverse while the other moved forward, creating some entertaining moments on the test track.
The students approached the problem like true engineers: isolate one variable, observe the result, make a correction, and test again. Their patience and problem-solving skills paid off. While the movement is not yet perfectly smooth—the cars tend to overcorrect—they now demonstrate real autonomous behavior.
Beyond the technical success, the experience highlighted something more important: resilience and collaboration. Students learned that engineering rarely follows a straight line (literally or figuratively). Mistakes are not failures but essential feedback loops that guide improvement, and deepen knowledge of parts of the system that we would have ignored and never forced to learn about had mistakes not been made. Next week we'll work on smoothing the cars' trajectories.
