Building Instructions

Building instructions for a LEGO Mindstorms animal that looks like a Penguin, and walks like a penguin and if you program it, it will even talk like a penguin. Can you program it to talk like a penguin?

We had a couple of minutes before starting another robot and we just came up with this robot. If you would like to build a Box Robot, but don't have enough parts this is a good construction that you could learn from. It has a frame. It has three motors. You can add attachments at the top. 

Maze Runners are one of the very popular robotics competitions. But there are a lot of limits that the robots must comply with. Like the size of the robot. 

This here are building instructions for a very small maze runner robot, build with LEGO Mindstorms EV3. It uses two tires that are technic and not Mindstorms simply because none of the Mindstorms tires fit the size limit. 

The robot has an Ultrasonic sensor and a Gyro sensor at the top. 

The building instructions are for a robot that kind of looks like the Spy Bot but it has treads instead of wheels. Like a Tank. Tank Spy Bot. Treads are always funny and you could use the robot chassis base to extend with additional attachments and tools. 

Following the Spy Bot, we have this new Spy Vehicle. Yes, yes it is using an ultrasonic sensor.

The building instructions are for a robot base that looks like a car but is not exactly a car and has a strange shape. Just like spy vehicles - a car, but not only a car and not just a car. 

"How do you build a forklift using only gear wheels and levers without a rake"... Ok, we would admit that is a difficult question. It even sounds difficult. So let's start with something easy. A LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot. It lifts objects in the air. It uses two gear wheels that work together and then move in different directions and are placed perpendicular to each other... This sentence kind of got difficult again... Let me try again.

Follow the building instructions with these 70+ steps and you will have a very nice robot and you will learn a simple trick of how to use gears and change the directions in which they rotate. 

Building instructions for a LEGO EV3 steering car. We use two large motors, so that the rear wheels will be driven independently by a separate motor. For your convinience, you can use the EV3-G MyBlock for moving the Boomer.

Building instructions for a simple car using an EV3 Large motor for turning the front wheels and EV3 medium motor with differential for driving the rear wheels.

"Bot. Spy Bot."

Many of us are fascinated by the idea of spies. Movies for "spies" are also very popular and if you haven't watched them check out the 007 movies. These here are building instructions for a LEGO Mindstorms robot with two touch sensors and one ultrasonic. It could be used as a spy - sneaking closer to you and detecting if you move or if you touch it. The whole idea for this robot came from NXT when there were sound sensors. Currently, there are no sound sensors in the EV3 set, but the robot could again be quite fun to program. 

Building instructions for a steering car. The front wheels steer through a Medium LEGO EV3 motor while the rear wheels are both driven by a single Large LEGO EV3 motor.

The data log from the experiment when moving forward and keeping straight with an implementation for Proportional compensation. 

In this spreadsheet, we have the values for the Integral part and the Gyro sensor for moving straight with the robot.

It moves and it collects. It collects objects.

These are building instructions for a LEGO Mindstorms robot that could collect objects. It is not actually catching them and that's why we call it "Simple Catch Bot". The general case is to program it to move on the floor and collect some of the Mindstorms wheels and tires coming with the 45544, 45560 or 31313 LEGO sets.   

Building instructions for a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot that we call Space Explorer. The motors are attached in a very interesting way to the brick. Both the brick and the motors are vertical and there are not many robots like this. With its ultrasonic sensor, this robot allows you to follow, find or avoid objects. Just like an explorer. And since it is a robot why not put it in space and call it "Space Explorer".

There is one part that is not from the EV3 sets, but you can actually skip it. You don't need it. Try to find which one.

This is the chassis for the popular FTC Push Bot. The robot is built with the Tetrix set and uses two motors. When preparing for a FIRST Technical Challenge competition (FTC) it is very useful to have a chassis from which you could start working. It might not, and will surely not be the final robot, but a good base is always useful. 

With this chassis, we've also made a short course of how to control it. Take a look at FIRST Technical Challenge. Basic GamePads, control and attachments for the Tetrix set.

In Robopartans classes we needed a few parts the the robot could lift in a competition. These is a box that is suitable for this

This is a disk image containing a Raspbian OS. The image is modified and set up specifically for the Perfect course. It contains all the needed files, libraries and additional tools that we would use in the course. The file is quite large so be prepared to wait some time while downloading.

Checksum: 4d85292f49a9350fcef9f2eb8fd86b77f1c6bd65ce1344848de3e201c9e1d20d

This LEGO Mindstorms robot is strange. Can you guess what is strange about it?... The motors are placed in a reverse direction. One of the motors is facing "forward" while the other one is facing "backwards". This means that if you make the robot move forward with a Tank Block in the EV3-G software it will just rotate. To make the robot move forward, you will have to make one of the motors rotate forward and the other one - rotate backwards.

The goal of this robot is to teach students that motors could be placed in many different ways. It is not always the case that the two motors face the same direction. Also, it is quite fun. 

There is a lot of physics and math involved when learning with LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots. It is generally "difficult" to include them directly during classes because students are coming for "something funnier" and at the same time, they could be of different ages. But Inertia is a pretty common topic that is quite easy to introduce to students, especially with a robot. 
The robot moves and stops. What will happen with the cargo when the robot stops? Naturally, the cargo will continue moving and this is dangerous. For how long, what would be the energy? All these are things that could be discussed with this robot.
The robot is not completely finished because you have to finish it and decide on the wheels to be used.