Robot Inspiration Series #15: Radar/Mapping Robot

In the RIS days, it was hard to make a robot that could map out its surroundings using only LEGO's official parts, since there was no distance sensor like the US sensor. Now with the NXT, it can be a lot easier. This week's inspiration is to create a robot that can at least partially map out obstacles in its surroundings. For example, can your robot display a "map" of a room, showing where the obstacles are in it? If you wanted to take it even further, you could try to make the robot "store" the map in memory and then navigate around obstacles using the map (this might be pretty advanced, since you would need a system to tell the robot its position, so that it would know if it was getting near the position of an object on the map).

One very nice example of a radar robot was posted on the blog earlier, here. This robot spun around 360 degrees and mapped objects within a certain range, like radar. This method seems relatively easy, but has the drawback of only detecting one side of objects; it can't see how far back objects extend and it can't detect objects that are behind other objects. It also has a limited range. It would be ideal if you could get a robot to make a more complete map, showing whole objects. However, this I admit seems extremely hard to do... I haven't even been able to think of a system that would do this, much less design one. But, like the LEGO MINDSTORMS motto, the possibilities are endless!

-Jonathan

P.S. You can see other posts in this series here.

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 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...

Ghostbusters R.T.V Remix

Nino Guba is from Torrance, California, USA. He played with LEGO as a kid, but growing up in the Philippines, it wasn’t something he had easy access to. He only got reintroduced to LEGO when he moved to the US and had kids of his own. When his sons were younger, they received LEGO sets as gifts, but as they grew older, the sets got put into storage as their interest faded. Fast forward a few years, he started coming up with his own product ideas and thought about how he could quickly prototype them. That’s when he discovered LEGO MINDSTORMS—and was hooked! He raided his kids’ old collection, got everything organized, and now he's designing and building his own creations, blending his coding skills with LEGO robotics to bring ideas to life. Tell us about your Ghostbusters Remote Trap Vehicle (R.T.V) project. This project is a LEGO Technic adaptation of the Ghostbusters R.T.V.—a ghost trap converted into a remote-controlled vehicle. Its companion build is a prop replica of the Futaba...

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