Trace Diamond: Overview

In this series of activities you will create a program for the robot to trace the diamond shaped figure shown in blue on the grid, moving around it clockwise. Looking at the figure, we see that we can break down the robot's motion into several parts:

1. Trace out a basic step: Move forward (up), then turn left, move forward (left), and finally turn right to face up again to get ready for another step.
2. Trace out a side: Do three step movements in a row.
3. Trace out the complete figure: Do four side tracings in a row.

Because the robot will be doing many of the same things over and over, it makes sense to create functions to use in the code. For example, instead of having to keep writing driveDistance and turn blocks every time the robot is tracing out a basic step, you will create a drawStep function to do that in this "Trace Diamond, Part 1" activity. Then in Part 2 you will create a function that uses the Part 1 function to trace out a side. In Part 3 you will add code so that the robot traces out two sides. And in Parts 4 and 5 you will write the program that puts it all together and traces out the full diamond.