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Introduction

mBot 1 is an educational robot designed by Makeblock, a company specializing in the creation of educational robot kits for learning robotics and programming. It is particularly popular in secondary schools for teaching Scratch programming.

Thanks to our AlphAI software, teachers can now help their students discover and understand AI.

In our activities, you will have the opportunity to train AI models in supervised or reinforcement learning, in order to carry out more complex tasks with the mBot 1 robot.

ATTENTION: AlphAI software is compatible with mBot 1, but not yet available for mBot 2.

Composition

The robot is made up of various modular sensors on the mBot robot. 

Sensors

1. An ultrasonic sensor and a motion sensor‍

‍Ultra-Sounds: enables use of the ultra-sound sensor located on the front of the robot. It communicates a value based on the distance sensed.
There are 3 operating modes:

• obstacle distance: the value returned is the distance from the obstacle measured in meters.
• obstacle proximity: the value returned is inversely proportional to the distance measured.
• Absence/presence of obstacle: the sensor returns 1 if an obstacle is detected and 0 otherwise. The obstacle detection distance can be adjusted using the slider below.

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2. Two IR emitter/receiver sensors

3. Camera (optional)

The actions

The actions you can use on the software are :

You can also create a custom action by clicking on the button:

The following window will then appear: 

Name your action and check "robot action" to modify the parameters: the new action is now available.

To save it for future use, click on File > Save > Save configuration.

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Operating environment

We recommend that you use mBot 1 in an AlphAI arena.

The absence of walls limits the activities you can carry out.
You can, however, simply make mBot evolve on a flat surface for certain activities.

To carry out all the activities on the software, mBot 1 will need :

• A very flat surface. Ideally, use a white tarpaulin.
• Walls higher than the robot
• One or more lines on the ground in a color that contrasts sharply with the tarpaulin (you can use black tape).

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