ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

TIME IS RUNNING OUT! SUBMIT BY AUG 10TH MAKE SOMETHING ! Are you using LEGO bricks to solve everyday problems in a new awesome way? Are you building cool innovations that could change the world for the better? We want YOU to be a LEGO MAKER and share your ideas! Submit your entry no later than August 10th 2016 at 10:00AM CET.  http://www.lego.com/en-us/rebrick/contest-page/contests/make-something What follows is only for inspiration - This would not be a valid entry as LEGO is modified and other products are being used (wood, metal gears etc) - Still when I see this video I'm totally inspired to MAKE SOMETHING using my LEGO Technic and MINDSTORMS set!!  So you still have a few days to submit your creation to the MAKE SOMETHING Rebrick contest and who knows we might meet at LEGO WORLD Copenhagen!!  Good luck to everyone ;) : . . 

A few weeks ago we presented you with the second edition of the ROBOTREMIX challenge; to REMIX the 42049 Technic set with the MINDSTORMS 31313 Home set.  We ended up with one transforming vehicle, one Rock Paper Scissors game, one mesmerizing Great Ball Contraption and one animatronic Monkey Head! Hard at work, the MCP's have complete the videos of their remix. All you need to do is sit back and enjoy! First, Mike Brandl  MONK3YHEAD a full featured animatronic. Second, Guilherme Constantino's transformer/grabber vehicle. OK it needs a little manual intervention but imagine if you could add another motor?! :) Third is Alexandre Campos pretty cool Rock Paper Scissors game, can you beat the robot? Finally we got Joe Meno's contraption, this is only a glimpse of what is possible with MINDSTORMS... what are you waiting for? start remixing your LEGO Technic elements with EV3! Thanks for taking the time to comment here or on the vi...

 The MINDSTORMS Community Partners (MCP) are at it again. Remix #1 was such a great success that the MINDSTORMS Team  decided to challenge the MCP's once again with a robot remix. The challenge this time,  to imagine what type of creative combination models could be made using only parts from the LEGO MINDSTORMS (31313) set and the newly launched LEGO TECHNIC Mine Loader (42049). The ROBOT REMIX #2 is a mix between the Mine Loader (42049) and the EV3 (31313) sets. The goal of this creative concept is to show the cool stuff possible remixing your LEGO TECHNIC set along with the MINDSTORMS robotic kit. There were lots of great ideas from the MCP group, but 4 ideas where finally chosen to receive a set to get started exploring the combination. The final and awesome creations by Joe (USA), Guilherme (Brazil), Mike (Austria) and Alexandre (Portugal) are shown below! Joe Meno's amazing Great Ball Contraption - GB-EV3 Guilherme Constantino's  tr...

Exhibit D: VLK-EV3 by Xander Soldaat, The Netherlands  For the last remix of RobotRemix#1, Xander tells us a bit more about the challenges faced with the execution of his idea; The VLK-EV3 (formerly know as Valkyrie) I am Xander, from The Netherlands. I am a senior software engineer for Robomatter and have been an MCP for about 6 years. My design proposal, a Valkyrie inspired robot, proved much harder to implement than I had originally anticipated. Without the help from Laurens Valk and Damien Kee, this robot would have been no more than a heaping pile of disappointment. Initially, it was designed it with the brick in the plane part. This worked fine until I started adding things like a head and wings. The small motor struggled quite a bit but really ground to a halt when I replaced the lighter battery pack with 6xAA batteries. I had almost given up, when, during an unrelated conversation with Damien, the failed project was mentioned. He suggested putting the br...

Exhibit C: LUCKY CAT by Robin Dai, China For this post,  learn a little bit more about Robin thanks to his fun self introductory text: Hi, This is Robin, from Shanghai, China. You may already notice my older face. Yes, I’m 56 and have been serving in Shanghai Police for more than 30 years. Fortunately, I still have chance to spend my leisure on exploring the amazing Lego cosmos for recent 10 years. I am so honor to be a member of MCP15. And as a lucky participant, the first thing I want to share with you all is that the Robot Remix is such a smart and exciting idea. I have been gladly struggling in utilizing and combining two sets as much as I can for several weeks. We have an idiom in China, saying "To throw a brick for a jade back" It's quite similar with your English one is "To throw out a minnow to catch a whale". Hope you like my creation and will have a whale of a time at your own remix exploration. 31313 + 42040 = LUCKY CAT Here are som...

Exhibit B: DANC3R by Arthur Sacek, Brazil Arthur Sacek is a product designer and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Since 2001 he has been developing LEGO models and educational programs for Brazilian schools. He also have a technology school, where he supports kids to create their own inventions. Arthur is member of the MINDSTORMS Community Partner (MCP) group in which was held the first ROBOT REMIX challenge. Arthur successfully remixed it into a robot dancer. 31313 + 42040 = DANC3R Here are some pictures showing the engineering details of this build and proof of concept. Arthur wowed us all with his preliminary sketches Front view of DANC3R Rear view of DANC3R Hope you enjoyed this ROBOT REMIX, please feel free to comment and share this project.  To see more of Arthur’s work, visit https://www.youtube.com/user/arthursacek   Learn all about the ROBOT REMIX #1 in the story posted earlier this week.  Sta...

Exhibit A: HELICOPT3R by Yoshihito Isogawa, Japan Yoshihito is the author of the LEGO Technic Idea Book series and the recent LEGO MINDSTORMS Idea Book. He lives in Tokyo, Japan and regularly holds LEGO workshops, lectures at schools and science museums, and creates LEGO for events and exhibitions. Yoshihito is also member of the MINDSTORMS Community Partner (MCP) group in which was held the first ROBOT REMIX challenge. Yoshihito successfully remixed it into a helicopter simulator. 31313 + 42040 = HELICOPT3R Here are some pictures showing the engineering details of this build and proof of concept. And now a few high resolution picture showing the main components of this ROBOTREMIX. The complete HELICOPT3R and EV3 assembly balances on this axle. Color sensor detects the position of the landing pad. The HELICOPT3R on its landing pad. Hope you enjoyed this ROBOT REMIX, please feel free to comment and share this project.  To s...

The MINDSTORMS Community Partners (MCP) are robot makers known for thinking outside the box, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible to create with MINDSTORMS! This is why during summer of 2015 the LEGO MINDSTORMS team challenged the MCP, and asked for help to solve a creative problem… The challenge this time,  to imagine what type of creative combination models could be made using only parts from the LEGO MINDSTORMS (31313) set and the newly launched LEGO TECHNIC Fire plane (42040). The ROBOT REMIX #1 is a mix between the Sea Plane (42040) and the EV3 (31313) sets. The result is the ROBOTREMIX, a creative concept whose goal is to show the cool stuff possible remixing your LEGO MINDSTORMS set with only 1 other LEGO TECHNIC set. There were lots of great ideas from the MCP group, but 4 ideas where finally chosen to receive a set to get started exploring the combination. The final and awesome creations by Xander (Netherlands), Robin (China), Arthur (Brazil...

Conchas at TechnicBricks has posted an excellent review of the new LEGO TECHNIC 8110 Unimog . It's the largest set in TECHNIC history. Find the review with plenty of pictures and videos here . The Unimog itself looks like a great model with lots of functions. And once you're done playing with the main model, it seems this set will be a very useful parts pack for your NXT robots...

When building complex robots, one of the common needs is to compute the ratio of gearings in order to exactly tune the interaction of the movable parts of your machine. With all the different gears around and the sheer number of possible combinatioins, this is not always a trivial task. Yesterday, though, I ran over a most wonderful web page by Sariel , a LEGO® aficionado from Poland well-known for his sophisticated TECHNIC inventions. Amongst other things, the page allows to select any combination of TECHNIC gears and displays the resulting gear ratio. Great stuff and most helpful indeed! Try it out (and do not forget to browse also the other intriguing pages of Sariel's web page).

LEGO Technic Tora no Maki While reading another one of my favorite LEGO web sites (TechnicBRICKs blog) I came across a discussion and link to an interesting PDF and books. The books are not strictly NXT related, but they do contain some very interesting construction techniques. All are elements described are very simple but can be included in more complex devices. The books are available for pre order on Amazon and Isogawa Yoshihito still has a wonderful 200 page PDF available for only $10. I downloaded the PDF, looked through it and immediately went to PayPal and paid the $10 he was asking. It is a free download and there are no restrictions on the content, but I suggest if you download it, like it and intend to keep it, please pay for it! This will encourage him and others to continue to publish books in this format. I like PDF format books as they are usually in full color and very portable (I can read on my laptop or iPad). I hope to see more books on both NXT and non-NXT topic...

You might remember my freefall ride I talked about a long time ago. I have made a video using the old photos and video's. It is already on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty9leziU3Vc (or watch here below). //note: The video on youtube is better quality I built this contraption some time ago, and personally, I don't think it is constructed *that* good, however it *is* an interesting project... I compiled the video from old recordings and photos, the videos are poor quality and incomplete... But it DID work. Unfortunatly I can't shoot new footage, because the model doesn't exist anymore... More information om how everything works (and lot's of HQ photo's) on NXTlog! http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Community/NXTLog/DisplayProject.aspx?id=99ca3747-512c-4c11-b79f-6a54489367f7 enjoy! Martijn Hellemans

Brian Davis and others are having an interesting discussion on constructing angles using TECHNIC pieces. (The top photo is Brian's. The bottom photo is a peacock with angled, TECHNIC wings taken from the NXT Zoo Book ).

The rubber axle joiners at the center of the grip are to prevent damage when gripping or pulling parts. Building instructions are here .

Kevin Knuth has posted some nice, TECHNIC equilateral triangles of various sizes. His triangles are for a drive system; however, clever folks can find other uses for them as well. Several of the triangles shown have lists of parts and building instructions here .

There are many blogs out in the world today. Many are devoted to LEGO topics. Some are devoted to Robotics. But not many are devoted to both LEGO and Robotics. The Brothers Brick is one of the LEGO Blogs out there. It isn't really Robotics focused, or even Technic focused. It's more of a "Check out this cool creation". They have a good group of authors, and a large readership. The Brothers Brick recently posted their 10 Other LEGO Blogs you should be reading . And guess who is on the list! That's right. The NXT Step! One of the other blogs they mentioned looks pretty good too. It's called TechnicBRICKS . They cover a lot of Technic creations, which often go hand-in-hand with the NXT Robotics creations too. And one last find. The Brothers Brick recently featured a Tripod Turret that is fully automated, and appears to be powered by some PF devices. You can read their writeup here. The Brothers Brick - Auto-Controlled Tripod Turret .

Even though most of the new Technic sets use the studless building style, it is sometimes hard to combine them with the NXT. Especially when the model is relatively small and you want to keep the total creation compact. There are many sets that have been motorized, but I didn't see a compact version of an 'nxtisized' Off Road Truck (LEGO #8273) yet. Therefore, I decided to give it a try. At the moment it moves aroud the room very smoothly, using the arrow keys on my keyboard and RobotC. I will implement sensors into this truck later, to allow it to move through the room autonomously. The four wheels in the back are all driven by two differentials and they can tilt, just like the original version. To place the driving motor, I had to remove the turntable of the the little crane. Now my question to you is, did you combine any LEGO set with the NXT? Or did you see some nice combinations on the web? Leave a comment here with a link to the robot and I'll start a new thread ...