Sweet Lego Stuff

I got the spiffy Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System. The basic idea is, you use some pretty standard Legos along with a processing/power unit, light sensor, touch sensors, and some motors to create robots. Oh, and you program them on your PC with some pretty easy, but rather powerful software. It's fun stuff, and I'm going to put some of my creations up here.

My first robot is pretty basic, but it took a good Saturday to get all worked out. The hardest part was getting the contacts for those front sensors solid enough to not break off at the first touch with something at a high speed. This this starts slowly, hits something, backs up, pivots 90 degrees away from what it hit, and then starts again, except that it now moves quickly. I'm pretty proud of it.

Second one is quite a bit more complicated. Brad helped me design a lot of it, and then I tinkered with it for several days. It goes until it hits something, at which time it backs up, drops the blade, and pushes whatever it hit, then it stops, raises the blade, and turns around to find something else to push. It was never quite perfect, in that the sensor that tells it when it has hit something (See the front view with blade up.) was often accidentally triggered by the blade trying to push something too heavy. Also, you can see the cord from the touch sensor, it's got the rubber band around it in the back, that was just getting in the way. Top of Second Creation

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By Dylan Flipse,