ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

MCP Philo , well known for a lot of exciting robots, deep insight into the NXT internal electronics and as author of many LDraw parts and of a NXT book (just to name a few things), has published a new fascinating device: a NXT-based 3D scanner . It scans small objects using a needle mounted on a LEGO® linear actuator and reports the data to a computer where they can be used to generate a related 3D CAD model: Intriguing! Note that the scanner has been programmed with pbLua , the NXT programming language based on Lua. A lot of more information can be found on the associated web page .

Does anyone want to guess what I am making here with three NXT motors? BleToothKiwi

Following on from yesterday's piece about linear motion in robots..... Today we will continue with a third and elegant way to achieve linear motion: Using the linear actuators. 1. What is a LEGO Linear actuator? Linear actuator (LA) is a brand new piece of hardware just released by LEGO, that is used to turn rotational motion of a motor into linear motion similar to a piston. It is just longer than an AA battery when it is not extended and it sort of looks like this: 2. How do I use it? Using a LA with a NXT kit is pretty intuitive. Just plug in an axle of a NXT motor (or a Power Function (PF) motor using the NXT adapter cable) to a LA. Write a simple program in NXT-G to drive the motor. I will post an example program in NXTLog ASAP. Programming does not need to be very precise as to the number of rotations - I did it long enough to do about 28 rotations to extend the LA fully - and it works fine. If you put too many rotations, the internal clutch handle it pretty well as you can ...

Last week we learned how to do a self balancing robot - including an excellent follow on post from Kirk. This Saturday's series looks at ways of creating linear (straight) motion for your NXT robotics projects. This is part one of a two part introduction to Linear Motion. There are many uses for linear motion in a robot. In simplest form it could be flexing of a robot arm or controlling the bucket of a bulldozer. More complex examples might involve shifting gears in an automatic transmission or activating a trigger. We are going to look at three simple ways to create linear motion using a motor under NXT control: Linear motion Using Levers attached to a spinning motor: This is really simple and the most common way a linear motion is created. Implementing is very easy with parts available in a NXT kit. Here is a video of how this works: Creating your custom actuator: It is pretty straight forward to create a custom actuator like the one below - it can be made with components that ...

There are some new cool stuff in the Shop at Home web site today including the long awaited 2008 models. For me, the coolest items is this one which has a couple of Linear Actuators: Followed by this item that has a couple of headlights: Of course you can get the headlight on its own with the PF motor set: What will you buy? How would you integrate them with your NXT? Here is the link to for S@H : LEGO shopping web site Look for the 'New' tag.