17. INVENTION, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, and INCOME¶

Assignment¶

My project is a modular maze made up of various wall and base pieces that can be put together in countless ways and designed to be used to run robotics competitions especially for kids and teens.
There’s also an electronics component that tracks when a robot finishes the maze and records it’s time.
Everything is modular and the user can choose to use as little or as much of the components as they want:
The maze can be used on it’s own without the elctronics.
You can build your maze in any layout you want. Make it as complex or simple, big or small as you like.
The electronics can be used on your own maze or other kind of robotics test.

Assembling a medium diffculty maze layout:

In operation:

Slides

Slides

Slides

A full breakdown of all the individual design files are located here Final Project Development page

This project is intended to be used as a support tool for instructors teaching robotics and their students. These can be:
Coaches for First Lego League teams.
High School or Middle School teachers where robotics is on the syllabus.
Administrators of extracurricula or after school robotics clubs.
Home school parents.
Building & Programming maze solving robots is one of the best challenges to give to younger students learning robotics. Having a modular, easily modifiable maze like this will be a great asset in helping to student learn.
It is also hoped that the elctronics components help encourage interest in programming and electronics design. And that it is also used as a demonstration as to how arduino boards and programming can evolve into real world applications and products.

I intend to distribute this project for free as design files.
The design files are given in formats that are easy to download, read, and modify with free software and webtools (TinkerCAD, Arduino IDE, and KiCAD).
Anyone downloading the files can use as much or as little of the project as they want:
They can just build the maze alone and time the robot manually.
They can cut their own maze panels without digital tools and just 3D print the connector pieces to help assemble it.
They can just download the program and use it with their own Arduino UNO board to use as a timer for their own maze or another project.
I plan to advertise the project and link to the files for anyone to download on sites like First Lego League Share and Learn Facebook page, and Lego Mindstorms Projects Facebook page.
I also plan to advertise the project in email blasts to students who sign up to various programs that we run at our national science centre (Robotics clubs, camps, and cometitions).
I will offer all the plans for free to anyone internationally who are interested.
Locally (we are a small island nation) we will offer to manufactor the maze and any of the components that anyone wants at our fablab for them to use at cost price (we are a non profit government organisation).

The plan is for anyone who uses the maze to give me feedback so that I can make variations and improvements over the years.
This is intended to be a living project where I am constantly updating the design files.
My hope is that this project helps support and inspire any student who is interested in robotics and electronics and to get them interested in our fablab’s services.

This project is intended to support educational initiatives.
As such it is given freely to anyone who is interested, locally and internationally.
This project and all its design files should be considered Public Domain and anyone is free to use or alter them without worry of IP infringement.

Last update: June 21, 2025