ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

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 t...

Ahhh the classic challenge of following a black line!  Of course this can be achieve quite simply by using the zig zag method but if you want a high performance line following robot you're going to need a little more math! Line Following with a PID Controller Image by:  Miguel Angel Blanch Lardin Luckily Miguel the guy behind The Technic Gear blog has recently published a fantastic tutorial explaining in details how to create a PID controller line following robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3.   I invite you to follow his tutorial found here http://thetechnicgear.com/2014/03/howto-create-line-following-robot-using-mindstorms/ With the help of his pseudo code you can write your own line following program or try his program thanks to the supplied EV3 source code.  Remember to give credit to his work if you use part or all of his code in a program for one of your competition or school work. Also do leave a comment here or on his own website about y...

One of our great readers Ivan just sent this through to me. He has created a video explaining how a PID (proportional / integral / derivative ) controller works and shows an example of it running on a simple NXT robot towards the end. Now the video is in Portugese (who says we don't cater for the international audience! :D) and although I've only done a semester of learning Spanish at university, I was able to keep track of what was going on. Even if I didn't understand any of the writing (he goes through a *lot* of post-it notes!), it was still great fun to watch, the style, pace and music of it just perfect.  I loved the little things that happen throughout, such as running out of room to write and having to add another post-it, and trying (unsuccessfully) to attach the NXT with masking tape :) Ivan's offering to put in English subtitles, so if you're interested, please make a comment! **EDIT: Ivan has added English subtitles! :) **

HiTechnic has released a new motor block that you can use in NXT-G. Here's an excerpt from the description found on the HiTechnic website . Why the HiTechnic Motor PID Block? This block is an alternative to the standard LEGO Motor Block. Unlike the Motor block, which when used with a duration of degrees or rotations, gives you relative control over the position of the motor, the PID Block is designed to give you absolute position control. With the standard Motor block, you might use it to go forward 45 degrees, go another 45 degrees, then go backward 90 degrees. Each time the motor turns an amount that is relative to the position that the block starts in. With the PID Block you specify an absolute position. For example, if you want the motor to go to position 45, you can pass in that value to the Set Point input of the PID Block and it will drive the motor to that position. If the motor starts at position 100, then it will go backward to 45; if it starts at 0 then it will go forwar...

Jetro informed me that Hispabrick Magazine has just released their eighth issue. You can view the magazine online using this link , or download the complete PDF by going to this link , and clicking "HM008 - English". Each of these options are free of charge. Hispabrick Magazine is about LEGO in general, but this issue is especially an interesting read for MINDSTORMS owners, as several articles focus explicitly on MINDSTORMS NXT. You will find an article about the MINDSTORMS Community Partners, as well as interviews with three of them, including Xander Soldaat, Fay Rhodes and me. Furthermore, you'll find a tutorial: "A PID Controller for LEGO MINDSTORMS Robots". Finally, the article "Actuators for the NXT" talks about several actuators, including the new FIRGELLI Linear Actuators. The issue also covers non MINDSTORMS topics, like Technic, Space, as well as reviews of new LEGO sets. You may also want to read the interview with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, th...