Can Robots Mindstorm? - TEAM SIX

14 August

2008-08-14T12:38:00.009+02:00

Task 3 (Ultrasound sensor on a side, touch sensor)

The robot has to go straight until it starts pushing the box, keeps pushing the box until ultrasound sensor sees the side wall again(that means that the exit is clear). After this it has to walk back 15 cm, it will turn on a side and it will go out the corridor.

Average error:
Technical issues:

Task 2 (Odometry, ultrasound sensor, bumper)

The robot goes straight until 10 cm away from the front door, turn left and goes until 10 cm away from the front door. Turns left and goes until it touches the side.
It turns right and goes straight until it bumps the door, keeps going straight 10 cm, goes right and bumps strongly the door, goes back 10 cm, turns left and keeps going until 10 cm away from the bottom of the box.

Technical issues: bumper must not me longer than 3 cm

Task 1 (Odometry - Ultrasound sensor)

Robot turns and go´s straight until the sensor sees the box, it stops and shows the distance

Average error: 2 - 6 cm

Technical issues: make sure that the robot goes straight, calibrate properly the ultrasound sensor and its range of activity

13 August

2008-08-13T15:16:00.011+02:00

The Robot I would like to own

Sinziana - Robot car
Laureano - A robotic vacuum cleaner
Giulia - A robotic grass mowing
Guillermo -

The Robot I would like to build

Laureano Martinez ``I would like to build a robot who can arrange in the fridge all the food so we can have more space to use and we always know if we are running out of a certain food´´

Giulia Frazzetta `` I´d rather build a surgeon robot witch can help surgeons in tumors removal. It should elaborate a surgery strategy by analyzing medical issues of both patient and tumor and make 3D laser cuts to help surgeon´s manual removal.´´

Guillermo Lopez Martin automating a car can be challenging, but making a fully functional helicopter robot is pushing engineering to a new level. There are some Stanford´s university projects that are automating helicopters capable of even making autorrotating landings.
More info on these helicopters can be found here: http://cs.stanford.edu/groups/helicopter/index.html

Sinziana Craciun `` I would like to create swarm robots to who you can command to make, for example, a car in just some minutes. I think this will help human kind in spearing time and also power´´

12 August 2008 - Calibrating

2008-08-12T16:55:00.005+02:00

Yes, we did it! :)

After building our Bot, we learned how to calibrate its sensor, and it will soon be really useful as we need to get ready for Friday Competition. Calibrate a sensor, as professor Nils told us this morning, takes time, patience, precision and some formulas. We went through all the testing and calculations and finally the results were good... or at least really close to the ones that we were supposed to reach!

The Competition

2008-08-12T14:44:00.000+02:00

A competition will be held Friday afternoon.

The 5 competition assignments are described below.

Each team will have two attempts at each assignment. The points will be summed. The team with most points will be the winner.

Task 1 - Find a Measure Distance to Box

The robot should start at ’Start’, go to the box and show the measured distance L in the display.

The distance is known to be between 2 and 3 meters.

Points: +/- 5 cm 2 points, +/- 10 cm 1 point.

n
Task 2 - Open Door and go into Garage

Points: 1 point for opening the door and 1 point for going into the garage

Task 3 - The Pushbox obstacle

The robot must push away the cardboard box and go through the two sidegates.

Points: 1 point for each gate

Task 4 - The Golf Course

The robot must start at ’Start’ and push the blue balls past the upper line and the orange ball past the lower line.

Points: 1 point for each ball that passes the correct line and -1 point for each ball that passes the wrong line.

Task 5 - The Odometry Test

The robot must start at ’Start’ and go one time around the wooden cylinders and back to the starting point. The error is the distance between the starting and ending point.
Two runs must be done, one clockwise and the other counter clockwise.
The resulting error is the sum of the two errors
n

11 August 2008 - Building the Tribot

2008-08-11T16:51:00.007+02:00

First day - Introduction day

Our first steps into NXT-G were made thanks to professor Luis Sanchez from Madrid.
In the first lesson he described the how a robot should be built, starting from designing it and going through programming and build its mechanical structure up to testing and finally enjoying it. We also had a look at the NXT-G editor and we were happily surprised that it is not that hard to be used.

After a break we were invited to get to the laboratories and have some practice on what we discussed earlier. And it came the hardest part of today: getting friendly with all the Lego pieces! It hasn't been that easy to put all the tiny parts together in our Tribot. It took us some time and efforts to go through all the six step needed...

First of all... let´s try to organize everything we need

Building...

Thinking....

Building again...

And finally... here it is:

Introducing Team Six

2008-08-11T16:33:00.002+02:00

Team Six is made of four student from different countries and background studies:

Guillermo Lopez Martin from Madrid, Spain. He´s studying Telecommunication Engineering.

Sinziana Craciun from Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She's studying Applied Electronics.

Giulia Frazzetta from Roma, Italy. She's studying Medical Engineering.

Laureano Martinez, from Mexico but student in Tampere, Finland. He's studying Automatics.

We all met in Copenhagen at 2008 BEST Summer Course few days ago. We just started to work on our project about creating a robot using Lego Mindstorms NXT-G.