2015 Building
LEGOs are fun. LEGOs are robots. Therefore, by the law of Syllogism, Robots are fun. MORE INFORMATION COMING. (we can look at the reflexive property! ooohh!) This year we transitioned from NXT to EV3, so it was a whole new experience experimenting with EV3, since we had more ports.
Rebuilding After State Tournament
Before World Championships, we had two large motors for the drive wheels and two medium motors for arms/attachments, but with the sports mission we realized that the medium motors didn't have as much force and power as we hoped, so now we use four large motors. The brick was originally tilted and we found we needed more room for the larger motors. We kept the wheelbase the same, but rebuilt the top of the chassis after the State Tournament and before the World Championship. Re-positioning our brick made it easier to read, gave us more room for attachments, and made it easier to charge the robot. It also allowed us to be more creative with how and where we attached things to the robot to complete missions. We also added gears along one side which were attached to one of the motors. This allowed that motor to be multi-directional and multi-purpose.
Use Sensors
On our robots, we use a total of eight sensors:
Rebuilding After State Tournament
Before World Championships, we had two large motors for the drive wheels and two medium motors for arms/attachments, but with the sports mission we realized that the medium motors didn't have as much force and power as we hoped, so now we use four large motors. The brick was originally tilted and we found we needed more room for the larger motors. We kept the wheelbase the same, but rebuilt the top of the chassis after the State Tournament and before the World Championship. Re-positioning our brick made it easier to read, gave us more room for attachments, and made it easier to charge the robot. It also allowed us to be more creative with how and where we attached things to the robot to complete missions. We also added gears along one side which were attached to one of the motors. This allowed that motor to be multi-directional and multi-purpose.
Use Sensors
On our robots, we use a total of eight sensors:
- four motor sensors - to drive the wheels and to power attachments
- two color/light sensors - to find colors on the mat, to find and follow lines, to square up to lines, and for the robot to "recognize" when it has gone too far past a certain color.
- a touch sensor - to know when a wall or mission model has been reached
- a gyro sensor - to make accurate turns
CAD Modeling
We used free software called Lego Digital Designer to CAD Model our robots and attachments. CAD stands for Computer Aided Design. We used many of LEGO's computerized pieces to construct a copy of both of our robots and all of our attachments. Although there are some LEGO pieces missing from the software (like large white wheels, certain beams, and colors), we were able to model all of our robot, as well as all of our attachments. With new updates to the Digital Designer, come more pieces.
CAD modeling our robot really came in handy in the summer of 2014 when we had to rebuild our robot to demo at the Science Museum (more information on our "Achievements and Outreach" page). We had borrowed an NXT kit for the 2014 season and had returned it and bought our own kit. Having a CAD model allowed us to reconstruct our original robot for the demo and use our mission programs without having to test them very much.
A CAD model is a great tool to have in our back pocket in case we ever needed to build our robot again or check for references.
CAD modeling our robot really came in handy in the summer of 2014 when we had to rebuild our robot to demo at the Science Museum (more information on our "Achievements and Outreach" page). We had borrowed an NXT kit for the 2014 season and had returned it and bought our own kit. Having a CAD model allowed us to reconstruct our original robot for the demo and use our mission programs without having to test them very much.
A CAD model is a great tool to have in our back pocket in case we ever needed to build our robot again or check for references.