A good way to go crazy...

Back on April 11, I wrote about the "NXT Black Book" written by Yoshihito Isogawa. If you take a close look at the cover of that book, you'll see a walker demonstrated.

The book does NOT provide the building instructions for this robot. What it does provide are 10 full-color photos of the robot from various angles. I was able to "reverse-engineer" this walker after a couple of hair-pulling hours - lots of mistakes and realizations and Ah-Ha moments. Finally, I was able to duplicate the walker.

Well, that was the good news. The bad news? I can't get the thing to actually walk. I've played around with this robot enough and have had it. I can't provide you with the building instructions because I don't know if that's legal or not. The author doesn't provide them, so you're forced to do what I did if you want to try and duplicate it.

What it comes down to is a robot that for all purposes APPEARS to actually walk, but doesn't. I've made appeals to the public to try and track down the author for a video or some technical help, but no such luck. I'm not saying the author doesn't have a real working-walking robot, but what I am saying is that if I've built the exact same robot from the photos, then this thing is just for looks. Maybe it's possible I missed some small secret part that makes the whole thing work, but I doubt it. If anyone else has the book, I'd LOVE to hear from you regarding if you were able to build the walker and get it walking.

I want to believe.

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and

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