Instruction Guide: EV3 - Line Follower

In this Lesson students extend the idea of the SwitchLoop to enable Line Following behavior.

In this Lesson we have 1 Primary Instruction Resource:

  • The resource is an EV3 Trainer lesson on Line Following.

Resource 1:

The EV3 Trainer:

Behaviors > Decisions > 10. Line Following.

The EV3 Trainer Teacher's Guide references this on pages 83 to 86.

Students should be able to answer the questions at the end both sections and complete the challenges. 

The EV3 Trainer Teacher’s Guide has additional reproducibles for those who have purchased the product. The  reproducibles for Line Following can be found on pages 113-114.

Have students work thru and complete the EV3 Line Following Task Assignment Sheet.

The EV3 Trainer Mini-challenge tracks a line for four rotations.

The final sign-off for the video lesson is the Line Track Challenge. The layout for the course is flexible, but it should include curves in both directions (some sharper than others) and some straight stretches. The course should be long enough that a "slow" line follower (slow turns/forward progress) that can negotiate the sharpest turns is unable to complete the course within the time limit - the goal is to have students optimize the line following strategy for different parts of the course.

Some key items to look for during this sign-off are:

  • A flow chart that gives an overall view of the program
    • Ask how they developed this flow chart
  • EV3-G program details to see how each block in the flow chart was implemented (including comments that identify the flow chart blocks)
    • Have them describe the switch block branches for line following
      • Do students understand that line following is actually "edge following"? The Switch block at the heart of the their program is basically saying, "If I'm on the line, get off - if I'm off the line, get back on" - thus, they waddle along the edge of the line.
  • What obstacles did they encounter and how did they overcome them.

Additional Assessment

This Line Following Task Assignment Sheet also includes several extended challenges.  The Obstacle Course Challenge, The Capain's Buried Treasure, Part 3, the Slalom Challenge and Extreme Line Following (needs to be modified to NOT use an NXT Sound Sensor) all combine many of the skills covered in EV3 Trainer.