Tech United Soccer robot made from LEGO MINDSTORMS

Guest blogger Hans Odenthal share's with us an amazing project built by his son.

This was built by my son Bram, 17yo from Trevianum in Sittard School in the Netherlands. It was for a study project that every student has to do at the end of the secondary school. That can be any topic and since he wants to start a career as software engineer, he choose a technical subject. Within borders, you can define your own project that of course need to be approved by the school.

He was inspired during a tech event and he saw the real robots. Since my company was a sponsor of these robots, it was easy to make an appointment to meet the real robots and to learn how the real one works.

For the study project, my son wanted to know if it would be possible to build a single robot with the same functionality as the real one, meaning:

The robot should drive in any direction using omni wheels
The robot can see the ball
The robot can drive towards the ball
The robot can grab the ball
The robot can shoot the ball
The robot 'knows' its location on the playing field

The robot has been build by Lego Mindstorms, with a total of 4 EV3 bricks, 9 large motors for the movement of the robot, a Pixycam camera for the vision, 2 large motors for grabbing the ball and 2 medium motors for the shooting. A gyro sensor is used to make sure that the robot only makes one full turn (360 degrees) when it is searching for the ball. Apart from the Pixycam, everything is regular Lego.

The result of his study project is shown on the picture below. The robot is able to drive, locate the ball (it should be in a range of 2,5 meters otherwise the camera won't see it), drive to the ball using a simple PID control algorithm, grabs the ball and shoot the ball

It is programmed in the normal EV3 programming environment, my son and I gives lessons in that. So programming was relatively easy for him (I helped him a bit with the PID controller).

Future plans? Not sure yet. Maybe I’ll take over from here and will try to improve the software and add more functionality. Meanwhile, click here to view the Flickr page with more pictures

https://www.flickr.com/photos/129513068@N06/sets/72157678705135431/

If you too have a cool project you'd like to share on The NXT Step (is EV3) don't hesitate to contact us (click on Tell the editor) :)

: . .

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort...

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and...

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...

ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Search This Blog