Current project: giant robot arm

At the last Lego World in Zwolle, a very large High Bay Storage system was demoed.  Unfortunately, due to time constraints, certain parts of it hadn’t been completely finished yet.  I was lucky enough to be able to get involved with this amazing project and was given the responsibility of programming one of the many robots in it.

This picture was taken last Sunday in the empty office building where the guys (Martijn, Gerrit and Eric) are working on putting the finishing touches on the High Bay Storage.

Some stats of this robot:

• It has two NXTs that communicate with RS485
• Programmed in ROBOTC 2.x
• 4 NXT motors
• 2 PF motors
• 5 Degrees of Freedom (DOF)
• Requires two moving boxes to be transported; the base can be separated from the robot itself.

I didn’t build this robot, that honour goes to Gerrit and Eric, I was merely adding some extra bits to it to strengthen the vertical part that comes up from the base and redesigning the gearing on the claw.

If you read the NXT Step then you will have seen this picture and perhaps the video as well, but I’ve added them so you can get an idea of the size of the whole thing.  Makes the arm above look dwarfed, wouldn’t you say?

There are an estimated 400,000 Lego parts in this thing, that includes around 28 NXTs.  No, you may not know the address where this thing is currently being worked on. We have snipers deployed on nearby roof tops to keep intruders out.

Joe Meno made an awesome video of the High Bay at the Lego World in Zwolle, you can watch it below.  Enjoy!

Leg godt!