Robots

Sometimes you build a robot and when you’re done you think: “What was I thinking?” This wasn’t one of those occasions. I built this robot with the sole purpose of looking really silly.  This is Ugly Duckling (UD).  It’s basically a LEGO body that sits on top of an aluminium frame.  The frame is the bottom half of a Parallax ...

BobBot Mk2 has learned a new trick: finding a can.  Finding cans makes BobBot very happy; he even chirps when he sees one and gets very loud when it’s about 10 cms away from one.  A lot of work still needs to be done: Approach towards can needs to be PID controlled for smooth steering instead of the waggle it ...

Meet BobBot Mk2, the intellectually challenged robot.  This subsumption based robot is probably the most challenging robot I’ve ever had to program.  It has quite a number of sensors: Mindsensors NXTCamV3 Mindsensors Magic Wand Mindsensors Dist-nx HiTechnic Sensor MUX HiTechnic EOPD LEGO Touch Sensor x 2 LEGO US Sensor Subsumption is not something I have an awful lot of experience ...

Mike Barnkob posted a really nice project on the ROBOTC forums;  a liquid handling robot.  I am sure you’ve seen them on most CSI shows; not like this one, however.  As you can see from the picture, it’s a fairly large contraption.  For additional coolness, he made use of the Firgelli Linear Actuators. The motors are controlled by using two NXTs ...

I love days when I really feel like building something, you know that inspired feeling you get?  Today I started building at about 9am and didn’t come out of my Lego room all day except for dinner and lunch. I took some pictures of the unholy mess my desk was covered with. The first picture was taken after about an ...

Gus from HiTechnic sent me a link to a very cool hockey robot he’s built, based on the Trike-base.  I know it’s not a puck, but it’s the thought that counts! Perhaps we should send a couple of them to Vancouver to help the Canadian team after their defeat last weekend!  Now put your hands on your cheeks, squeeze and ...

After weeks of programming, I can finally say that the robot arm is done!  it moves quite  nicely, albeit a little slow. All in all, I am quite pleased with the final result.  The whole thing was programmed in ROBOTC 2.x. After a weekend of programming and fiddling, it has now become an integral part of the Lego High Bay ...

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 ...

For Lego World 2009 in the Netherlands I wanted to make a remote controlled version of the Crane Truck (8258).  It seemed pretty easy, after all, it’s a pretty big truck, right?  Well, I had underestimated the amount of space the gears and all the bevels take up.  In addition to the 4 powered functions in the original model, I ...

For the Lego World 2009 in the Netherlands I built an omniwheeled robot.  It’s been done thousands of times before and the Internet is full of great (and not so great) examples.  I wondered why I hadn’t jumped on that bandwagon so I got cracking.  This was the first prototype I made back in August.  I was on a Lego ...