6We Design a Robot

Fawzooz took Mohamed and Lina to his lab full of gadgets and said, “Today we’ll learn the basics of programming, and design a simple AI model.”

Lina asked, “Do we need lots of maths?” He answered, “Maths is important, but don’t worry; we’ll start with easy basics. We’ll use a programming language for children called Scratch.” Mohamed said, “I know it! I used it at school.”

“Learning that never stops is the key.”

Fawzooz explained, “In Scratch we use coloured blocks to write instructions. We’ll start with a block that moves the robot forward when we press the arrow.” Mohamed and Lina dragged the blocks into place; programming was like a building puzzle.

Then Fawzooz said, “Now let’s give the robot some intelligence: when it sees red it stops, and when it sees green it moves.” After a little trying, the robot was moving and stopping according to the colours.

Mohamed shouted, “We did it!” And Lina said, “I’m proud of what we made.” Fawzooz said, “You’ve programmed a simple AI model. Learning that never stops is the key; with every try, you’ll learn something new.”