In order to practice the code that you will learn, and generally to make things a little more fun, we will be using the finch robot. This little device is an inexpensive way to learn how to implement programming in an actual hardware device externally to the computer screen and also acts as a beginners guide to programming robotics.

To begin with let's have a look at the different hardware found on the robot.

Finch Hardware

Next, let's have a look at actually making it do something. I am assuming here that you have already installed BlueJ and have tried to run at least a 'hello world' program in it. You can watch the video or download the PDF here.

Finch Robot BlueJ Installation

Feel free to play around and explore the code and what it does. If you are even brave enough, try altering some of the code and see if the robot will react the way you think it will.

Alternatively, have a go at controlling your robot by programming it using this basic tutorial.