Part 2: Make it Sense
Yesterday your robot moved by timing alone, blind. Today you give it a sense of touch so it can feel the world and stop before it crashes. Touch is the first and most important sense any automated machine needs, and it is exactly what keeps the harbor's self-driving vehicles from hitting people and cargo.
How can a robot react to something the instant it touches it, without a driver?
- Confirm your robot still drives from yesterday
- Build touch sensors, called whiskers, on the breadboard
- Code your robot to feel a wall and change course
- Run the obstacle course and race the clock
The harbor's newest machines drive themselves. At Long Beach Container Terminal, self-driving vehicles haul containers across the yard with no driver, and at APM Terminals on Pier 400, electric self-driving carriers do the same. None of them have a steering wheel. They use sensors to know where they are and to stop before they hit anything.
Long Beach Container Terminal runs a fleet of about 100 self-driving vehicles and dozens of automated cranes, making it one of the most automated terminals in the world. Every one of those machines depends on sensors that a technician installs, tests, and keeps working.
Someone has to make sure those safety sensors never fail. That job is the Automation and Safety Technician. The whiskers you build today work on the exact same idea as the bumper sensors on those port vehicles: touch something, react instantly.
- Los Angeles Harbor College, Wilmington, electronics and computer technology
- LA Trade-Tech, electrical and automation pathways
- Long Beach City College, advanced transportation and mechatronics
Local employers to know: APM Terminals Pier 400, Long Beach Container Terminal, and Pacific Crane Maintenance.
This is a self-driving container vehicle, called an AGV. Long Beach Container Terminal runs a fleet of these today. They carry heavy containers with no driver and use sensors to stop before they hit anything, the same idea as the whiskers you are about to build.
- Power on and run yesterday's drive code once. If it does not move, check the batteries first, then the code. Swap in fresh AA batteries if the power light blinks.
- Predict with your partner: how does a person cross a dark room without hitting the walls? What could you give a robot so it could do the same?
Whiskers are two thin metal feelers on the front of your robot. When the robot bumps a wall, a whisker touches a post and the robot knows it hit something. You will build and test them straight from the Parallax tutorial.
All build and code steps live in the Parallax cyber:bot MakeCode Tutorial Series. Today you use the Touch Navigation for the cyber:bot tutorial inside it. This page sets the pace; the tutorial has the exact wiring photos and code.
- Whisker tips are sharp. Handle them from the bent end.
- Set the power switch to 0 before you build on the breadboard.
- Hand up for a wiring check before you power on.
- In the series, open Touch Navigation for the cyber:bot and build the whisker circuits. Use its parts list and photos.
- Hand up. A facilitator checks your wiring before you power on.
- Follow the same tutorial through the whisker test. Press each whisker and watch it register on the micro:bit LED grid.
When both whiskers register on the grid, your robot can feel. That is the first sense it has ever had. Now teach it what to do about it.
A sensor is useless until the robot does something with it. Now you write the logic: drive forward, and when a whisker hits a wall, back up and turn. Then take it to the obstacle course.
- In the series, continue Touch Navigation for the cyber:bot to the navigate-by-touch lessons. Get your robot driving forward and reacting when a whisker is pressed.
- Take your robot to the course your facilitator set up. Let it loose and watch.
- Note where it gets stuck. Change one thing, back-up time or turn amount, and run it again.
- Log your tries on your Port Engineer Log: what you changed and what happened.
Change only one thing between runs. If you change three at once and it works, you will not know which fix mattered. That habit is the whole job.
Finished early? In the same Touch Navigation tutorial, do the Escaping Corners lessons so your robot can back out of a dead end instead of getting stuck. Then run the hardest part of the course again.
Now make it count. Each pair runs the course one at a time using whiskers only. Fastest clean run wins. If your robot stalls for more than ten seconds, that is a did-not-finish, but you still place.
- When your team is called, set your robot at the start and press reset on the facilitator's go.
- Watch the other teams. Note one thing another robot did better than yours.
Film 15 to 30 seconds of your robot running the course. Scan the code with your phone to open the workshop Padlet, then tap the plus button to post your clip.
Your robot went from blind to feeling its way through a course on its own. That is reactive control, the exact safety layer that keeps a self-driving port vehicle from hitting a worker or a container. You built it and tuned it yourself.
Name one place a whisker-only robot would still fail. What kind of sensor would fix it?
Tomorrow your robots start talking to each other over radio, the way the harbor's machines share status across the whole port in real time. That is the Internet of Things. Bring your robot.
You built and tested a sensor that makes a machine stop before it crashes. That is real safety-technician work. Here is how to turn it into a local job.
- Free local career centers help you at no cost. The Long Beach WorkPlace and Pacific Gateway serve Long Beach, Signal Hill, and the LA Harbor.
- Search CalJOBS, the state job board, plus the careers pages of the Port of LA, Port of Long Beach, and the terminals.
- Ask a teacher, counselor, or your TRIO advisor to connect you.
- Put this workshop on your resume. List real skills: building sensor circuits, testing them, and fixing what does not work.
- Use a professional email with your name, and ask a teacher or Woven facilitator to be a reference.
- Apply even if you do not meet every preferred line. Entry level means they will train you.
- Get free help writing your resume at the local career centers listed below.
- Tell the story of a problem you fixed this week. That build, test, fix loop is the whole job.
- Show up early, look sharp, and bring one question about the team.
- Lead with reliability, safety, and eagerness to learn. That is what gets hired.
The Long Beach youth career center helps ages 14 to 30 with resumes, interviews, and training at no cost, and it even runs a Port of Long Beach internship. Ask a Woven facilitator how to get connected.