BrickFest ‘06 - mindsensors.com Controls a Skull Bot
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
For yet another look at the new mindsensors.com PlayStation wireless controller for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT, check out this video from last weekend’s BrickFest. The guys hook it up to a skull head robot built by Philip Eudy. Spooky, yet totally awesome! I want one!
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MS Robotics Studio - Service Tutorials
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006The documentation for Microsoft Robotics Studio, a new Windows-based development environment that allows the creation of robotics applications for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT (and other robotics hardware), has been pretty skimpy lately. In fact, any help thus far has consisted only of a few tutorial files provided with the installation. Being familiar with software implementations, however, I can understand that the focus may be centered first on getting the product to work before documenting how it works.
That said, I have to give kudos to the guys over at Microsoft for updating their site today with several new Robotics Studio tutorials. The new content takes aim at creating and subscribing to services.
Writing an application using the Microsoft Robotics Studio is a simple matter of orchestrating input and output between a set of services. Services represent the interface to software or hardware and allow you to communicate between processes that perform specific functions.
If you are new to Microsoft Robotics Studio, we strongly recommend that you begin with these tutorials to create a strong foundation upon which you can build as you progress with Robotics Studio.
It looks like they have several tutorials in the pipeline to cover general robotics and simulations, as well. The great thing with these latest tutorials is that a robot is not required. Good for me 1000 miles from home!
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BrickFest ‘06 - Man Meets Machine
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
You thought Kasparov vs. Deep Blue was epic?! Well, witness as I, a self-proclaimed tic-tac-toe virtuoso, squared off against Bryan Bonahoom’s W.O.P.R. at last weekend’s BrickFest. It was a great battle that ended in a draw, but even more impressive was the robot itself.
See the video.
In describing the robot, here’s what Bryan told nxtasy.org:
W.O.P.R. is a robot that exploits the advantages of NXT over RCX. I previously constructed an RCX based robot to play Tic-Tac-Toe. Obtaining the accuracy required (1/2 a stud in two directions) to play cubes was very difficult and it required many pieces and sensors. With the NXT, I simply used the built in motor encoders. Additionally, it was difficult to get the required dynamic range out of the RCX light sensor to distinguish between filled cells and empty cells on the board. The led to much more complicated solutions to detect the cubes on the board. The NXT light sensor is able to consistently distinguish between cubes and empty cells.
All of this led to an ability to construct a much simpler robot. I also changed the cube size from 4 studs with the RCX robot to 2 studs. Simpler robot and smaller cubes allowed me to construct a much smaller and portable robot. Additionally, this led to a higher reliability. The WOPR ran through BrickFest without any physical breakdowns. The only time it had difficulty playing consistently was when the batteries were extremely low.
The NXT display also enables the inclusion of instructions to the user on resetting the robot. This allowed WOPR to run unattended. I just wish I had included a game counter in the code.
As a side note: Some of the readers may not be old enough to remember the movie War Games from the early 1980’s. This is where the name of my robot came from. WOPR stands for War Operations Planned Response. If you look at the NXT carefully, you will see that it is named Joshua.
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