Little robot, big dreams: Making Roversa easier to use, build, and explore

Roversa has always been shaped by the people who use it.

Over the last few years, educators, students, researchers, university teams, and community partners in Virginia and Colombia have helped us test ideas, uncover challenges, imagine new possibilities, and improve both the hardware and the learning experiences around it.

That ongoing co-design process is a big part of how Roversa has become what it is today.

Built through co-design
Teachers participating in Roversa research projects across Virginia and Colombia have created lesson plans that integrate computer science into a wide range of subject areas and across K–12 grade levels. In Virginia, educator consultants with VSTE Professional Services have helped us work with teachers in Salem City, Nelson County and Goochland County Schools to co-design lessons for the Roversa repository. Their ideas continue to expand our understanding of what meaningful computer science learning with Roversa can look like. 

UVA First Year Engineering students have contributed ideas and prototypes that have inspired updates for Roversa.

UVA First Year Engineering students share their PetBot designs

First year engineering student shares charging station design

Researchers and designers from the Global Center for Equitable Computer Science Education have also come together in Costa Rica to share what they are learning through research, compare experiences across contexts, and test possible design changes to Roversa. Bringing research and design into the same space helps us move from what we are observing in classrooms to concrete ideas we can prototype, test, and refine.

Global Education for Equitable CS Education visiting Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica

These collaborations continue to influence how we think about Roversa from classroom activities to hardware and software design. Here are a few of the latest updates that have grown out of that process.

Tune Roversa
Every Roversa is a little different. Small differences in motors, wheels, surfaces, and assembly can affect how far a robot travels or how accurately it turns.

We’ve been working on new tools that make it easier to fine-tune Roversa’s movement.

• For Standalone Mode, a new calibration wizard walks users through adjusting forward and backward movement, turns, and distance.
  
• For MakeCode, new calibration blocks give students and educators more control over Roversa’s movement directly within their programs.
  

These updates make it easier to get more predictable movement while also creating opportunities to explore measurement, testing, iteration, and debugging.

Build Roversa
We’ve been expanding the ways Roversa can be built and supported with new 3D-printable designs. Our new 3D-printable Roversa chassis gives schools, makerspaces, libraries, and community partners a way to build and customize Roversa using equipment they may already have.

Inspired by the first-year engineering students, we’ve redesigned the Roversa charging station as a 3D-printed option. The new design is much easier to assemble and provides a safer, more practical way to organize and charge multiple Roversas.

You can explore these new 3D-printed designs for free by joining the Roversa Community.
The Roversa Community is also where you can share what you build, suggest improvements, and help shape what comes next. Together, these designs are another step toward a more open and distributed Roversa ecosystem, where communities can make, modify, and support more of the platform themselves.