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...

Today we have a guest blog post by Clarence Rossant from France an his new robot that is equipped with a camera: " VI3WBOT is a mobile robot which is equiped by a camera (a mindsensors NXTCam V4), a color sensor, a touch sensor and a gyro sensor. Using the NXTCam V4, it can reconize and catch a yellow ball of specific size, thanks to its colour and its form. In my first programm, I just made a recognition using colour information, but the robot also detected other yellow objects (for example the bottle of the video)! The NXTCam V4 delineates a detected object by a bounding box and outputs the coordinates of the corners (x and y). With this information, one can calculate the area and the rough form of the object. In my program, I test the area and the shape of all the yellow objects, and the robot always chooses the good object (or nothing, if no object is a yellow ball ). The NXTCam V4 is a complex sensor, so it outputs a lot of values per second, and these values vary v...

Leon Overweel , the creator of the robot that is handing out flyers , has come up with a new nice machine: a NXT-driven rig for panning and tilting a mobile phone's camera that can be remotelly controlled: Programming and building instructions can be found on his blog .

Whenever I made images and movies of my NXT robots previously, I always have been unsatisfied with the quality of my recordings. Hence, I decided to build a stable camera stand to avoid at least wiggly images. Of course, as a NXT builder I ended up not with a simple stand but with a programmable camera car on rails (which is, as I learned, in lingo called a " camera dolly "):   I am still lacking the skills to produce such excellent robot movies like some of my NXT colleagues; but at least I might be able to make some with smoother tracking shots now.

Some members of the Chinese NXT blog cmnxt.com have published a nice video on a NXT based camera platform: Addendum: More details can be found on the camera platform's associated web page at cmnxt.com.

Now that we're on break, I had some time to do another demo in the series; this video shows a robot using the Android phone's camera to locate the line and follow it. The connection is based on Bluetooth, and all that is sent is the line's distance from "the center" of the received image. Around near 0:57, you can see the yellow dash that marks the position of the line. This is subtracted from the center of the screen (width/2) and sent to the NXT, which adjusts the motor speeds proportionally using the steering function. The bright light that creates a glare in the screen is actually the flash on the camera, which I turned on in order to eliminate outside lighting conditions. The phone is almost as good, if not better, as a light sensor! Enjoy, and happy building! Richard

YouTube user lesswire1 has posted a nice video of a robot who finds self-fulfillment in looking at its creator wherever he goes. Remarkable here is the chain of technologies used: an attached IPhone tracks the person and appropriately controls the movements of the NXT robot by sending light signals to the robot's light sensor.

A very nice pan and tilt setup for use with a DSLR Camera. First video shows how it works and the second video gives a example of what it collected. via - http://hackedgadgets.com/2011/09/13/lego-pan-tilt-system/

Nice little camera made from the NXT. It uses the old style 35mm flim (none of that fancy-schmacy digital stuff) and has a pinhole that is opened quickly to expose the film. The NXT motors also wind on the film for the next shot. I love how you can set the ISO via the NXT screen and I'm assuming that will control how long the shutter is open for. -- Damien Kee www.damienkee.com

Team Robidog from Switzerland has "built a NXT robot that moves a digital cam around while it is shooting an image each second. The cam runs in multi shot mode on a firmware extension called CHDK with consistent light exposure. Once the robot has covered a 180° area, it moves down for 10° and continues. This way, a 180° x 60° panorama view image comes into being which is finally assembled on the computer. When making use of the maximal zoom factor of the cam, almost a Giga pixel of data is generated."  (Translation from the creators' statement) Very nice! Another movie with a panorama image of the Reformierte Kirche in Richterswil (CH) can be found  here .

Mindsensors.com is working on two new devices for the NXT. NXTHotShoe "NXTHotShoe will allow you to trigger two cameras and/or flashguns from your NXT and you will be able to control the trigger time of each of them individually, with one millisecond granularity." Obstacle detector "This rugged design with ample mounting points is specifically made for NXT Sumo Wrestlers. This sensor will provide information about presence of obstacles directly in front or front-right or front-left." Read more here .

This rig is currently being used to film a stop-motion, animated film. The top two movie clips are of the rig in action. The bottom two photos are of the rig itself. More details are here .

I keep ending up with a list of things to mention, but not enough time to do it (or not enough material for a full post), so here's a brief roundup of a few things. So in no particular order... The HALE mission has put out a nice YouTube video, showcasing some of the video as well as the still photos from the ground team end of the mission. It also gives (at the end) a run-down of some of the faces & names involved. Take a look, and enjoy the music & presentation. HALE YouTube Mission Steve Hassenplug has come up with a novel robotics game he's named "PSumo" (for "programmable sumo"). The idea isn't to make fantastically complicated or fast sumo robots, but instead to make a series of nearly equal robots that casual observers can "program" by using RFID cards swiped by a sensor on the robot. It was a huge hit at the recent Brickfair event on the east coast, and I'm sure we'll see it a lot of other places. We'll probably have...

The video is grainy, but an impressive proof-of-concept nonetheless.

The latest NXTLOG Challenge is up. From the description: "The MINDSTORMS NXT Camera Bot Building Challenge is asking you to create the NXT spy bot, paparazzi bot, photojournalist bot, or even a robotic fashion photographer. We are looking for robots that can take still photos (not video), and we want you to also share the pictures taken from your robot’s point of view. There's no limit on amount of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT sensors, motors, NXT programmable bricks, HiTechnic sensors, or Bluetooth communication you can use on your MINDSTORMS NXT Camera Bot." Read more here .