ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Now here is one awesome robot design!! Youtube user akiyuky さんのチャンネル from Japan presents in this video the LEGO Mindstorms NXT 5-axis Robot S750 Demo Notice the combination of Technic and System gives this robot a very slick design! Simply inspiring!

One of our readers Aris just sent through this enormous robot arm he has been working on. It manages to lift a cup of water (heavy glass, not light plastic!) off a table, and then follow a black line through the house setting the cup down on another table. Some quick specs Total weight: 4.2kg Maximum load: 1kg 7 Motors (NXT and PowerFunctions) 1 NXT 1 RCX Pneumatic Gripper Fantastic work Aris!

I recently filmed the Snatcher (building instructions in the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book ) at one of the events I was attending, and thought it would be fun to share this video with you. In this video you'll see the Snatcher running the program as presented in the book: autonomously looking for an object, grabbing it and lifting it.

The GBC (or Great Ball Contraption ) has always been a favorite of mine. It's something I helped start, and has been embraced the world over. Recently there's been a new series of videos by YouTube user akiyuki showing some amazing mechanical solutions, but one just popped up that shows a robotic arm (driven by an NXT) that is simply amazing to watch: (earlier portions of this are here , and are absolutely amazing considering that there is no NXT or electronic intelligence involved. Another great mechanical implementation is here ). Mechnically (and, clearly, in terms of programming) this individual has done an amazing job. But even beyond that, they have a look that inspires. Too often my robots are functional, and that's neat... but taking the extra time to make them look really good, that attention to detail, is rare. Here is a user that manages to combine all those facets... and does it really well.

With the end of the previous Snap Bot challenge, the new challenge is up - Robotic Arm! The rules remain the same - no limit on the amount of hardware used, and your entry must be tagged "roboticarm". From NXTLog - " Robotic arms are no longer the work of science fiction writers. They are shaping the future of industry and medicine. Bionic arms give amputees a new lease on life enabling them grab, reach, and hug. Industrial arms make assembly line tasks safer and more efficient. They even allow astronauts to work better in space. On the fun side, robotic arms can be used as candy grabbers, pancake flippers, or even back scratchers! Your first NXTLOG challenge of the new decade is to design a MINDSTORMS NXT robotic arm." The interesting aspect to this challenge is the question... how many degrees of freedom will your arm have? Full information can be found at NXTLog: http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Community/NXTLog/DisplayProject.aspx?id=4b486264-50d3-404b-92c8-b728...

Forum readers Ariel and Enrique have built and programmed The Hand from our book One-Kit Wonders . See the video they made here .

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...