ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Continuing on with examples of teaming up the NXT with other computing device ( Android , Android , Sifteos ) is this great project using the Raspberry-Pi Using the Raspberry-Pi and some Python scripts, David Llewellyn-Jones from LJMU was able to control his robot from a wireless keyboard. The keyboard talks to the Raspberry-Pi, which in turn sends Bluetooth Commands to the NXT with instructions on how it should move.  The NXT can also send sensor readings back to the Pi, which means you can do some serious computational work without the need for an external PC. As David says, The wonderful thing about all of this is that although it requires a huge amount of effort and insight to get each of the individual pieces working, none of the effort was mine. Pulling the pieces together is really straightforward, building on so much clever work by so many people. It's got to the stage where you can grab a phone charger, some Lego, a £35 PC the size of a credit card, a wireless ...

Willow Garage seems to be a really cool place to work at -- if you remember the video of the PR2 robot fetching a cold one from the fridge you'll know what i mean -- and with the recently announced NXT-ROS software stack, based on NXT-Python, their days now include playing with LEGO Mindstorms!  Check out the recent announcement here: Willow Garage recently announced that it designed code to link the popular Lego Mindstorms NXT to the formidable Robot Operating System (ROS) Once a robot is connected to ROS, you can start running applications such as the base controller, wheel odometry, keyboard/joystick teleoperation, and even assisted teleoperation using the ROS navigation stack. The NXT-ROS software stack includes a number of example robot models for users to play with and to get a feel for using NXT with ROS. One part that caught my attention is the use of  LEGO LDD files in ROS’s 3D visualization display. If any of you have tried out this package plea...