ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

  I came across this amazing challenge from COPA-DATA 's zenon Visualization/Automation Software called the COPA-DATA zenon Challenge 2014       Meet Dimitri, He is a teacher at VIVES Technical College in Belgium, him and his students have participated in this challenge with an absolutely beautiful LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robot.   "I am a teacher in a Belgium technical university and my class and me are participating in a EV3 Robot competition “the zenon challenge” where we have to make an EV3 robot and program and visualize it with an industrial visualization software package called zenon. Our team is doing very well, but now in the final days of the competition it seems that the public voting system will decide if we end at the first place or the second place." Dimi, the VIVES Automation Team. VOTE HERE for the DELTA EV3  "The manipulator robot that is on a clear mission" and help them get FIRST place http://www.zenon-challen...

I love a lot of the complex, massive LEGO robots out there... but sometimes what really impresses me is thinking outside the box. I recently ran across this example of using the NXT as anything but a "toy"... but as a serious way of rapidly generating a solution to a real problem. This group needed a way to torture test a DVD player, and rather than generating some special solution, they turned to the NXT, and quickly tossed together a solution to the problem. When the player ejects the DVD, the NXT robot gently grabs the disk (sensing it with the light sensor), and then after a short time reverses and re-inserts the disk. And when they're done torturing the drive? 100% reusable parts. I like the way they're thinking. -- Brian Davis

Watching a typical multi-degree-of-freedom robotic arm can be a joy. Separate from precision welding on car frames, they sometimes seem to have a life of their own, and the way they seem to dance and flow is almost mesmerizing in some cases. PnP ("Pick and Place") was built for a couple of reasons - first, because it was fun, and second, because a number of folks seemed to think it would be hard or impossible. It started as part of a challenge that involved building LEGO using only LEGO - a hard challenge in the first place, but we were trying to do it with only the parts available in a NXT kit. A lot of folks commented that this would be "very difficult" without some easy mechanism for linear motion, like gear racks... but I wasn't convinced. First, there were other ways to generate linear motion (lead screws, or certain mechanical linkages). And second, I wasn't sold that linear motion was required... so I set out to do it without linear motion, and using...