Personal Robotics
by Mike Keesling
Understanding, Designing, and Constructing Robots and Robotic Systems
Personal Robotics
LEGO My ...
LEGO® has become something
of a household word. If you
grew up in the 50s or later,
you probably owned a set or hoped
to, in any case. It is not only a
part of our culture, but also has
international appeal. LEGO started
out making small wooden toys
in the 1930s. They slowly grew,
adding plastics to their repertoire of
materials.
After a fire burned their facilities
to the ground in 1942, they dropped
their wooden line of toys completely,
focusing on plastics only. Several
times in their history, they have
made leaps and bounds in the level
of technical detail of their toys,
electrifying them and adding lights,
culminating with their MindstormsTM
line.
Adding hundreds of different
technical parts, including switches,
pneumatics, light sensors, and
motors, LEGO is really a great way
to get into robotics and design with-
out having to cut or drill materials.
There are thousands of websites
out there featuring everything
from plotters to photographic
instruments, all built with LEGO.
With so many different projects
available, focusing on one is nearly
impossible.
Of the nearly 200 LEGO
Mindstorms titles listed on ama
zon.com, one caught my interest.
Competitive Mindstorms, by
David J. Perdue (ISBN 1-59059-
375-8), is not only interesting and
well-written, but it turns out that the
author was only 16 when he
penned this masterful tome on
LEGO Mindstorms sumo combat.
Given the amount of passion
behind the works of the young Mr.
Perdue, I decided to look into the
Mindstorms thing myself.
I managed to haggle with a fellow employee, trading an old motorboat engine for a slightly used
Mindstorms kit. My older Robotics
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Invention kit came to me in pristine
condition with all the bags intact. I
certainly got the better end of the
deal on that one.
Following the text was easy
and construction is well laid out.
David has a good programming
style and his code is well commented. I, too, agree with his choice of
using “Not Quite C” as the native
language of programming the
bricks is annoying at best, and I
had to deal with upgrades and
such to use my older set with my
current OS.
Personally, I found the selection
of sensors extremely limiting. As
far as the microcontroller is concerned, I felt like my hands were
tied in tight little knots. In all fairness, when I first started out (about
2,500 years ago, it seems), this
would have been a blessing to have;
it is just that I long since grew past
this level of sensing and control. I
played a bit with the examples, but
my imagination was hindered by
the hardware.
In all fairness, I have to mention that there are a lot of after-market capabilities out there for
sensing. On one website alone, I
found infrared rangers and rota-tion sensors, as well as books
on the subject of hacking the
system to add more sensing
functionality.
The mechanics themselves
are excellent and the selection
of parts is awesome. For a
beginner, this book and a
Mindstorms kit will take you
very, very far. For the seasoned
professional, perhaps you will
find the limitations to be a challenge or you might choose to
APRIL 2005
Chameleobot the quadruped.
