The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide

I’ve added video of Claw-Bot, the robot from Chapter 13 of The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide, to the “Pages” section of the blog. You can also watch the video below.

Claw-Bot is based on the Zippy-Bot model from Chapter 11, adding a claw-like subassembly with an ultrasonic sensor and a light sensor. Claw-Bot moves toward the center of the NXT test pad, spins in a circle until it detects an object with its ultrasonic sensor, and then drives forward to push the object until its light sensor detects the black line. The robot is programmed to find three objects, but it’s easy to change the number to more (or less) than three. Go Claw-Bot!

I’ve added video of Bumper-Bot, the robot from Chapter 12 of The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide, to the “Pages” section of the blog. You can also watch the video below.

Bumper-Bot is based on the Zippy-Bot model from Chapter 11, adding a bumper built around a single NXT touch sensor. Bumper-Bot is content to explore its surroundings by randomly running into objects and then changing its path. Fortunately, robots don’t get headaches from bumping into objects—unless they’re programmed to get headaches, of course.

I’ve added video of Golf-Bot, the robot from Chapter 16 of The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide, to the “Pages” section of the blog. You can also watch the video below. Have you ever seen a LEGO robot golf? This bot scans its surroundings for a special LEGO target, places a ball on the ground (a LEGO ball, of course), and then hits the ball into the target. Despite its size and complexity, Golf-Bot can be created from the pieces in a single NXT set. There’s just not that many pieces left over by the time you’re finished building!

I recently added a funny video of Tag-Bot, the robot from Chapter 14 of The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide. Check it out below. For one part of the video, I stuck my camcorder (which is very small) onto Tag-Bot’s “head” with the aid of some special “glue dots.” Using this approach, I was able to get some video of what it looks like from the robot’s perspective!

I’ve put together some video of Guard-Bot, the robot from Chapter 15 of The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide. As noted in the book, an interesting characteristic of this six-legged walking robot is that it uses two independent motors to power the legs, and each motor powers a set of three legs on its side. Normally, this would result in the robot’s legs eventually becoming unsynchronized (which would make walking very difficult–or humorous!). However, using the built-in rotation sensors in the NXT servo motors enables the robot’s legs to stay synchronized quite well.