Friday, May 15, 2009

Calibrating NXT motors

I always wonder why some of the robots my students build often don't go perfectly straight. It seems that not all NXT motors are created equally. This article from TechBrick.com explains how to calibrate the NXT motors to find out which ones match each other most closely:

Simple NXT Calibration: Look Ma! No Tools!

Monday, May 11, 2009

Line Following Chalenge

My students at MUN Lifelong Learning used the light sensor on an NXT robot to complete a line following challenge. They had to start the robot on the red circle, find the starting position on the oval, follow the line around the oval, and have the robot finish on the red circle.

Here are videos from Groups 1 & 2:



The Scroll Challenge

My students at MUN Lifelong Learning used the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit to complete the Scroll Challenge from James Floyd Kelly's book, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure. The students built a simple arm and attached it to a motor on their robot. The robot then had to move in between two boxes and lift the scroll of paper off the boxes and bring it back to start.