ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

I stumbled upon BrickEngineer this evening. I especially liked the mechanism for a smooth LEGO clutch. There's some great animation that shows the clutch in action. It would make a great stand-alone mechanism, or it could be incorporated into a robot. Be sure to check out all three Meta Parts Pages. There's even something for geometry geeks.

Anybody involved in Junior FLL? I received an email from someone who was using JFLL as an after-school activity, and that got me wondering how the experience has been for others.

ISOGAWA Yoshihito, author of "The Orange Book" (OB)has a new PDF book coming out on October 1. Unlike the OB, this book has very little text (only 3 pages to be exact) but over 200 pages of mechanisms (a nice mix of small, medium, and large) built from LEGO and Technic parts, including NXT components and the new Power Functions motors. It's all in full-color and he's asking for those who download the book and find it useful to contribute $10.00. I'm including some screenshots here of a few of the 211 pages. There are some amazing designs here and I'm having a hard time picking which ones to use as examples. The book does not require the reader to speak or read Japanese and all 211 demo pages are fairly easy to figure out and duplicate. FLL teams are sure to find some great examples for inspiration. The sheer amount of work put into these mechanisms is amazing and I highly encourage those of you who do download and enjoy the book to contribute - this will allow...

For the past 10 years, I've been teaching LEGO classes based on the Dacta 1030 simple machines set. With the advent of the LEGO NXT, I was hoping that LEGO would release a simple machines set that incorporated studless beams and other elements from the NXT set. It's my contention that these elements are not as familiar to most students who have built with LEGO retail sets, and thus there is a big jump from ordinary LEGO play to building with the NXT. The Science and Technology Set 9632 is a new set from LEGO Education aimed at elementary students ages 9 and up. The curriculum guide points out that it was designed to be used by non-specialist teachers. It's low-tech, and the curriclum guide seems very user-friendly. I've been previewing a set for a couple of weeks. It's been fun to build the models. They are sturdier than similar models with studded beams. Last weekend, I was able to watch a group of kids play with the set for the first time. They had a blast. Most...

For the past 10 years, I've been teaching science enrichment classes. One of my classes, LEGO Challenges, is built around the Dacta 1030 set. Without any directions, and using just the pieces in the set, students try to build the tallest tower, the strongest bridge, or the car that will go the farthest when rolled down a ramp. My students get started on a challenge, share ideas, and then refine and apply what they've learned from each other. If necessary, I'll demonstrate a helpful technique. I don't let my students look at the instruction booklets until they have spent time building on their own. It's not that I'm opposed to instructions -- I just think they should follow some initial exploration. I'll confess that I never warmed up to the first generation of Mindstorms. My own kids were too young for it, and where I work, other teachers led the robotics classes. I'm looking forward to working with Mindstorms NXT, but my primary interest right now is th...