The Robotics Class Club...

Hey Guys Jason Has Started The New Club Called The Robotics Club...Its At 1.30pm In Future School...
Dont Miss It...

International Robot Olympiad

Hi Everyone!!!
I have again found another competition that's happening very soon!!!! But this one is in Singapore!!!! And is in November!!!
If you want to know more here is the website:
Information On the Olympiad!!!!
If you go to game categories listed on the left side of the wbepage, there is big list of tasks for different age groups!!!

The LEGO League!!!!!

Hi!!!!
I've found this really cool website where it shows the the date of the lego tournaments in many countries!!!! Though it has a certain age limit to compete, the website has a lot of informations on mainly the tournaments and leagues happening internationally!!!!
So here is the site:
The Lego League

Robots

Our Robot!

Today post will be about the robot that we realized.
As you may remember, from where I left you, we had a series of problems with our robot but all of them are, for now, solved, and the only thing that now will bother us is to program of the robot.

The first problem that we faced was the fact that the push coming from the two touch sensors was too great, and unfortunately it lifted the front wheels (the ones that push the robot forward, backward and enable it to turn right and left) so that instead of moving the robot was perfectly still.

The problem was solved by increasing the weight on the front part of the robot, by moving the 'brain' forward.

The second problem revealed itself when the back wheel(the one that makes easier to the robot to turn) started to be unables to moves so that the robot found a lot harder to move.

The problem was apparently solved when we did increased the length on the rod that was holding the wheel so that every movement was enough strong to move and direct the wheel.

However the problem was not solved at all, because when the robot turned more that 90 degrees the back wheel and a part of its rod touched one of the front wheel,
making the robot unable to turn.

As you may know with the help of Luca the problem was ended.
In fact we changed the back wheel and its rod into a single sphere, that not only did not created problems but was even more efficient by reducing the friction!

So for now thats all.

Bye by Grem.

Today Class 27/08/2007

Hi, everybody.
After a very moving speech by Jason to our class today, I have decided to write a post for each class, or at least all of them at which I will attend!
In each of these posts I will recap what we did and what did we discussed about.

I hope that my effort will be appreciated and of course knowing myself better than anyone here that I will continue this task.

Today Class: Enlightenment!

I am very happy to announce that our group (Me,Ashwin and Luca) had, today, finally made our robot works without any problems!!!!
(Special thanks goes to Luca who has been enlightened and resolved our problems!!!)


Before continuing with this litany I'll explain what was our task.


A very famous society called "Stewart & Jason" hired us and an our rival, for projecting and realizing a robot, made by pieces of LEGO for a important mission: tracking and send back home the crucial data stored in to their old robot called "B.Ball".


Even though our GPS are the best on the market our robot won't be perfectly dropped in the right position.

So first of all we will have to locate B.Ball's corpse and then get near enough to permit to our robot to interface to its hardrive and then to transmit all those data.

Even thought this task is very difficult there is also an other problem:
the last known position of B.Ball was on an upland.
This require a special upgrade, that for us was very difficult.
Enable the robot for a new task: to avoid all those cliffs.



You know our task, and into the next posts I will inform you about how our robot works and what problem we were and are facing!


For now is all, I wish you a good day, a good night or what ever you'll do next!



Bye by Grem

Useless...

It was really nice of Vinay(tha great) trying to encourage hi team saying it is the best, because they found a way to avoid the cliff using the light sensors... But the point is that when searching for a ball with the color blue the light sensor is the only way to find out the difference between the red and blue ball. So what am trying to say is that Vinay, Angelo, and Jonas have found something really cool which doesn't help in our task...
The point would be that only the touch sensor which doesn't have a big importance in the finding the ball, can be used to avoid cliffs. Finding the ball is taken care of by the Ultra sonic sensor. but finding the ball with the correct color would work only with the Light sensor.
Although the information that Vinay (tha great) was trying to say was totally of, I appreciate that he tried to do his home work... By posting a post!

Critical Task!!!!!

In our last class, we were working on the cliff avoidance task!!! We came up with several ideas and finally our group(Angelo, Jonas, and Vinay) came up with the idea of using the light sensor to detect the cliff!!! And the other group (Ashwin, Ema, and Luca(who actually din't show up for no reason)) did the cliff avoidance using the touch sensor. Our group had some trouble using only one light sensor, the bot couldn't detect the cliff if it went in a steep angle... So we decided to use 2 light sensors on each of the sides!!! And then we did some massive programming, big thanx to Jonas and Jason!!! And by the end of the class we managed to make the bot stay on the table without falling!!!! We did have some troubles during the class, but succeeded at the end!!! Team work makes it PERFECT!!!!

Nice Test for Bluetooth?

This blog entry on nxtasy.org provides a data logging tool where the robot can send information back to a PC via bluetooth that records the data to a file

Online Robotics Bookmarks

I'm making a collection of cool links for robotics stuff on my del.icio.us site

Feel free to recommend links that you want me to add...

Good Blogs for learning more about the NXT

so here's a nice blog about the best LEGO NXT blogs out there...

start checking some of these out to learn more info, and share what you find with the class here on the blog...

Challenging stuff!

I was looking on the internet of some robot competition and saw something really interesting thing on the NASA web site. It talks about competitions... The competition is also basically on Lego as well...

Tank Rover

Tank Rover
Hey guys I was looking through this lego site i found an intresting thing...
Check out the link its a little bit like our course and it too has obstacles and looks cool too...

Blog Visit

Red Alert...
So after a long time of pleading i agreed to Manu's suggestion... What he pleaded was that he wanted me to post out a advertisement of the Hamsterbotics site... As we are the Master Minds of robotics i agreed to his pleading after 3 hours of non stop pleading and finally posted it only on the Future School bulletin board... Anybody disagree with this??? Anybody wanna fight about it??? Anybody wanna have a one on one death match? Come meet Manu after school... or send an email to < address withheld > for appointments... If you still are not satisfied... Come meet Jason the "key of behind all this pleading"... After school as well...

This is Ashwin (master of the universe) reporting to you hidden from the sight of Manu and Jason...
Thank you on behalf of the FSR
(Future School Robotics)

General NXT Tutorial

Here is a set of nice flash-based tutorials with movies and a voice track that introduces a lot about the NXT. Check out the Data Hubs tutorial in the advanced tutorials section to get an idea of how to get sensor output to display on the NXT's front display panel.

Engineering Tutorial

Part of the focus of this course is engineering - how to use the lego components to build a stable robot. There is a nice tutorial on learning the new 'studless' building methodology of the lego technic kits.

Software Updates available

I found a couple of useful updates from the lego.com site

• a firmware upgrade - version 1.04
• dynamic block update - allows adding custom blocks designed by other people

A big hand for Ashwin!

hi everyone,
First i would like to point out that one of our prized members, Ashwin, has already managed how to change the font size, thus creating a truly amazing affect that keeps the readers in a constant anticipation, not knowing what size he will choose next! (in short he is the Masteroftheuniverse)

Otherwise i would like to inform everyone, that during our last FSIG meeting, Uli Blass put me in the spotlight, and set upon himself the task of a small interrogation, asking me several questions about the FSR. Indeed i answered these questions positively, giving him an optimistic view on our project. He has even suggested, he would send us to Chennai where we would present our achievements to the chief executives of his former company.

Thank you...:)

Jonas

New Things...

Robotics
Robotics
Robotics
Robotics
Robotics

Ok So the last class we had this intensifying discussion about who is going to charge the batteries... Then we were here on computers trying to create this marvelous blog for all those that don't have the capability to communicate with our far too advanced brains in robotics and technologies... Therefore we created this blog so that people who are slow in the brain could at least communicate through this internet technology which we created few decades back...

Sincerely Ashwin
speaking on behave of the FSR (Future School Robotics)

P.S: Hey guys who's going to charge the batteries any way?

First things First

... the wise one spoke!

After many hours of intensive research and training our specialized team of robotics experts have come up with the latest in lego robot technology for your viewing pleasure.

Stayed tuned for more posts.

Sincerely, the FSR