NXT Robotics Motor Car

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Throughout the last few weeks the “Contemporary Science and Innovation” class has been

Parts to motor car

Parts to motor car

experimenting with Lego robots to understand: distance, velocity, acceleration, and force. Lego Mindstorm NXT is a robotics kit that is programmable released by Lego Company in 2006 replacing their first generation kit. The computer of the Mindstorm NXT is called the NXT intelligent brick. The intelligent brick is the brain of the machine that lets the robot perform operations you tell it to.

To be able to experiment with the cars the class had to construct them first. With our teammates we assembled the NXT motor car using the parts provided to us within our kits and the instructions on the blog. The first thing we had to attach was the motors to the intelligent brick which makes the car eventually move. Attached to the motors is supportive components and the wheel.The support is connected at the top of the motors through pegs so that the motors stay steady and don’t sway when moving. The back wheels are attached to the bottom of the motors with connector pins and the front wheel is attached creating L-beams and axel jointers. After attaching all the wheels we placed the RJ-11 cables into the two motors and the USB cable into the intelligent brick and computer.

How to support the motors

How to support the motors

After powering on the motor car the group went into the LabVIEW program through Windows. LabVIEW or Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench is a platform and development environment for visual programming language through a company called National Instruments. To make the motor run forward Within LabVIEW, click view > function pallet > NXT I/O > place motor and drag into block diagram. That makes it so the motor car has a motor but a constant isn’t created yet. To create a constant you move the mouse over the object (motor) > right click > create > constant > Port A. What this does is tell the computer that you want Port A to move or the wheel attached to Port A. Next the group created a while loo which is a control flow statement that allows information to be implemented recurrently (structure palette > selection rectangle).

If you want to make the while loop stop so that the motor car stops with the press of the orange button; you have to wire the NXT button to the stop button. This is done by clicking the NXT button and dragging the grey dotted line to the stop button. To change a constant’s power the group right clicked the constant and typed in the number needed (in this example 50). To make more functions follow the directions above (third paragraph) and then right click that constant on the blue dot to add another port function.

To save the project and download the group went to file > save > right click (on the bottom bar) > NXT > download > click orange.

Completed motor car

Completed motor car

The second lab is a continuation of what I talked about in the paragraphs above only we had to measure distance and velocity. Distance is scalar quantity or actual path length traveled, associated with speed. Velocity is a vector quantity meaning there is a direction. This lab is using the motor car to measure the distance the wheel traveled and the speed at which the car traveled. The first thing we did as a class was program the motor car to spin clockwise in a circle of two feet and the separate groups had to figure out what setting to have the motors run so that one wheel is turning more than the other and measure it with the ruler. This was done by measuring the circumference of the wheel (.19m) which we later plugged into the program. Subsequently running the program the group recorded how many complete turns the wheel had made and the degrees at which the wheel was rotating. Knowing the degrees at which the wheel turns lets the group know where the wheels stopped and how many turns it had made. The program (VI) recorded the distance the motor car traveled but the group double checked with a ruler. From this data above the group found the percent error for three trials at low, medium, and fast with the outcome of medium and high speeds having the least difference of measurement compared to low speeds. The formula is as follows:  (d stands for distance). Motor-Car-Turning

The lab did a wonderful job of opening my eyes and helping me understand how cars work and how we can save energy while driving. This is important information to be aware of when purchasing a car or designing a car to be economical and energy efficient. This is extremely important so we can help little by little to reduce the toxins within the air and planet to decrease the ill effects of global warming.

27 thoughts on “NXT Robotics Motor Car”

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