Robotics competitions with LEGO Mindstorms robots are very popular. One of the more popular types of robot constructions that are build for such competitions are the so-called "Box Robots". In this course we are gathering a series of videos on this box robots along with building instructions and recommendations of improvements.
It's inevitable. While following this gapped line we would reach a gap. The robot must somehow understand that there is a gap and must make a decision on what to do. For detecting the gap we use the Rotation Sensor. Not the most popular, but very convenient in many cases. Check out the video.
Use any corner of the room as a starting position of the robots. The two perpendicular walls will be the feeding spots. Parallel to one of the walls, about two meters ahead, stick some tape which will mark the entrance to the coral reef. Turn a box for LEGO parts upside down and use it as a rock. You can see the field below:
How to make the robot stay idle while the program is still running.
Have you noticed when some programs are either loading or executing, they display text on the screen that tells you what is happening? Many programmers add a message line before every operation, where they say what their program is doing.
This way, they can easily find a problem if such appears. This is called debugging and we will learn how to apply it by printing messages on the brick display.
We can calculate how much time the motor should turn at a given velocity in order for it to reach the required position, but this will not be necessary. In such cases, it would be much easier to use the run_angle().
You are not using sensors?! You are positioning the mindstorms robot only by moving forward, backwards and rotating it. That`s one of the BIGGEST mistakes teams make on the FIRST LEGO League competitions. In this video we are showing a robot with chains and how imprecise are the results are when you are not using sensors.
Again a LEGO animal. This time it looks like an ant. It's interesting that this robot has no wheels and moves in a way very different from the rest of the "wheel robots".
There is much to be learned about mechanics from the way animals move. Ants are a good example. In the real world, an ant could carry a load of 20x its mass. It would be interesting to see how much load could this robot carry? Try it.