ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

I have been building MINDSTORMS robots for about five years now, and in this time I've created quite a few different robots. I have recently created a new website to share information about these designs. Only some of the 35+ designs on this website have building instructions, but the construction and design tricks may still be helpful to you. The link is here .

Although I've been really busy with FTC ever since the competition got underway, I've still found some time here and there to work on NXT projects. One concept I've always been interested in is the idea of making a certain number of motors able to drive a larger number of mechanisms, one at a time. So I put together a simple transmission design, in which two motors can drive each of four axles, one at a time. The first motor turns a gear which can drive gears on each of four axles. The second motor drives a rack-and-pinion system to move the first motor to across the four axles. The user can press the left and right arrow keys to switch from driving one axle to the next. Here you can see the four axles with black gears on them, and the grey gear on the motor which drives them. Here you can see the rack-and-pinion mechanism for moving the first motor across the four axles. You can see a video of the robot in action below: Although it would probably make a robot more complica...

"The idea is simple. Each swimmer wears a GPS unit which can be activated should the swimmer become in distress. The rest is up to the Seascout, which will pick up the GPS beacon and make a beeline straight for the drowning victim and scoop them up to safety... ...Andre Harley, designer of the "Seascout", created the concept Seascout using a radio controlled boat cut in half and a Lego Mindstorms Robotic Kit." (Above quote taken from official description). More details here .