We made robots!
Similar but, unfortunately, not the exact one.
We created Lego Mindstorms robots (Ages 8+) last Monday. Each pair got a box of tiny pieces and a couple of huge pieces. I was slightly inept at assembly but eventually I got the back wheel part assembled. After the whole thing was put together, we plugged it into the computer and used Labview to program it. Initially, we just made the thing go forward. In class today, we were shown a screen with a whole program for the robot on it. I was concerned. Thankfully, we didn’t have to create that program – we just had to use it to calculate distance and velocity. We manually measured the distance and velocity while having Labview measure those same things. The measurements went as follows:
| Power Level | Distance1 (meters) | Velocity1
(meters/second) |
Distance2 | Velocity2 | Error (%) |
| 75 | .7 | .23 | .72 | .72 | 2% |
| 50 | .51 | .17 | .51 | .17 | 0% |
| 25 | .27 | .09 | .22 | .07 | 8% |
The point of the calculations was to measure at 3 different power levels.