Lego Pong with NXTCam
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Here is an interesting robot from wayneage that plays Pong using a NXTCam camera to track a ball in real time. The NXTCam continuously sends the location (coordinates) of the ball to the NXT brick. The robot keeps adjusting its position to hit the ball when it is close enough. Before the robot starts, the NXTCam is taught the colours to track using another program called NXTCamView (this is not shown in the video). As you can see it works quite well - nice work!
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Using the Power-Functions Remote to Control an NXT
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
The robot on the top is controlled by the Power-Functions remote through the home-made IR link that the robot carries. The NXT reads the IR commands from the link and uses them to control the motors. Channel 1 on the remote controls the drive motors, and channel 4 controls the grabber. The program that runs on the IR link is the same program that I posted earlier, which is able to both send Power-Functions commands and to receive them. An NXC program on the NXT parses the 16-bit command to extract the channel and specific command (this was facilitated by Lego’s publication of the protocol).
The little vehicle on the lower left is a conventional Power-Functions vehicle, using a battery box, a receiver, and two medium motors (one for each large wheel). It receives on channel 2, so the same remote can control both it and the robot.
Click on the image to watch a video of the two in action.
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Kong videos on YouTube
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
John Brost put on YouTube three videos of Kong. Kong was designed & built to compete in the rock crawler challenge at Brickworld ‘07 in Chicago, IL, and won the event.
Now, John put some videos online, see them at the links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9eEYHZI1JU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzhwBWrCRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgUAK1xQOpQ
There’s also a NXTLog page here.
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Solenoids on Lego NXT
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Aother nice project from markr80 - NXT controlled solenoids. Well documented video, and good references too (see YouTube description here)
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LocoArm: Robot Locomotion on Rails
Friday, April 6th, 2007
A robot that moves on rails can traverse large distances quickly and still reach its destination accurately, because it only needs to navigate a one-dimensional world. In this robot I used Lego train tracks from the RC Trains line, along with a train motor from the same line. The motor is a 9V motor that can be controlled by the NXT using a converter cable. The robot detects stations that have stands for a ball using the light sensor, but it was challenging to stop the robot precisely at the station.
Read all about it and watch a video!
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Omni Teaches Physics
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
Ever since I saw Steve Hassenplug’s “Omni” (see also in NXTLOG), I wanted to make one of my own. Last week, I finally obtained enough wheels via Bricklink to make the three “omni-wheels” needed. Working on Omni, I soon realized that controlling the three motors is actually the toughest problem with this type of robotic motion. If you want Omni to move in any one direction, you should (in general) operate all three motors in varying speeds. The videos showing Omni in action suggest that Steve controlled each motor independently using a second NXT sending BT commands to the Omni NXT brick. I wanted to use my PSP-Nx PS2 Controller Block and maneuver Omni with a wireless PS2 controller. In this post, I’ll describe how this is done and how Omni can be used to teach students something on elementary rigid body kinematics.
Posted in personal, video, projects, news | 45 Comments »
LEGO plays hidden camera with the NXT
Monday, December 18th, 2006LEGO has put out two marketing videos (Robot Power and Robot Attack) where they placed 2 NXT robot demos and a hidden camera to record people’s reactions… Have a look for a good laugh….
Direct Link: http://5×5m.com/files/mindstorms/
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Move over Lexus, make room for NXT
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006The Lexus Intelligent Park Assist system has been in the news quite a bit lately. Who wouldn’t want a car that parks itself? Well, inspired by this, a creative LEGO Mindstorms NXT builder has succeeded in making his own self-parking robot.
It’s a kind of robot-car done with LEGO mindstorms NXT elements that can automatically park itself if it detects enough space between 2 objects. It has got an ultrasonic sensor that detects the length of free spaces. Then, when it detects enough space, it makes the necessary movments to park. And when you say “GO!” it returns to the road.
See the video. He gives the ‘car’ in front of him a little fender bender on the way out, but it’s still very, very cool!
[via TechEBlog]
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Hi-Res Video of DTU 2-NXT Demo
Thursday, December 7th, 2006As an update to news from earlier today, a higher resolution video of the DTU 2-NXT demo is now available.
[via Multi-Agent Robotics]
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LEGO Mindstorms NXT Synchro Drive
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
Here’s a video of the running, and subsequent disassembly, of a LEGO Mindstorms NXT synchro drive.
I have been working on creating a new Synchro Drive for the turntable that comes with the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. I have the basics worked out but I need to refine it a bit so I de-constructed it on video so I can start over.
[via Robot Thoughts]
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Another Demo of Two NXTs in Action
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
Here’s another video demonstration of two NXTs in action, but unfortunately filmed with a low resolution. From the description provided, each robot removes his respective objects from the LEGO grid.
This demonstration is part of a student project at the Technical University of Denmark and has the following goals:
Two teams, red and blue, of modified tribot agents are collaborate in removing a number of blue and red items in a closed world. Only red team tribots can remove up red items, and the blue items can only be removed up by the blue team. If a tribot encounters an item which it is not permitted to remove, it must communicate the finding to the other tribots.
The site has been added to our blogroll.
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A Tale of Two TriBots
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
My local LEGO educational distributor (Robotec Technologies) asked me to create an interesting NXT demonstration for an NIDays exhibition. The end product was a 2 NXT demonstration using slightly modified TriBots which communicate via Bluetooth (BT) and using a combination of ultrasound (US), motor encoders and two HiTechnic compass sensors. The first TriBot finds and captures aluminum can, and then sends a message to the other TriBot, which in turn finds it, aligns the two iteratively by measuring azimuths using compass, and finally pass the can between the two. All programming was done using NXT-G.
A video of the whole process can be found here on YouTube. I’ll put more details and programs on NXTLOG soon.
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NXT Second Life Video
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Over the summer, Wired hosted an event in the virtual world of Second Life to kick off the LEGO Big Robot on Campus series. The Media Factory has posted a video with highlights of what took place.
Posted in video, news, events | 2 Comments »
Wii Will Hack You?!
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Word on the streets is that the Nintendo Wii is a blast to play. Its innovative wireless motion-sensing controller (the Wiimote) is revolutionizing the video gaming experience.
Sure enough, hackers have been dissecting the hardware to reveal what lies beneath all the pretty plastic as soon as they got their paws on the system. It seems Nintendo didn’t disclose too many details about the technology behind the Wiimote, so it was only recently discovered that it’s actually a Bluetooth-compliant device capable of communicating with devices other than the Wii. Great news for us, wouldn’t you say!? Imagine wirelessly controlling the arms of your robot with the physical motions of your own arms. Sure, we’ve seen a gesture-based application for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT, but this takes it to another dimension — literally!
Do any of our readers own a Wii? Anybody up for the challenge of creating the first Wiimote NXT application? I’m sure the NXT community, and even the rest of the tech world, would be interested in seeing it. Good luck!
Here are a few resources to get you started:
Wiimote Technical Guide
Video of Wiimote acceleration reading on a PC
Posted in video, hardware, news, knowledge, hacking | 8 Comments »