http://www.classroomantics.com/lego-robotics/
So I have never been the girl who wanted to build a robot. But let’s admit, that little robot up there looks pretty cool.
Except:
Ours didn’t exactly look like that. In fact, it resembled more of a tricycle…I’m a twenty four year old woman building pre-training wheels robots.
After hunting down the various teeny tiny pieces required to build this Lego NXT two motor robot, we successfully put it together, with only a few small adjustments. After making the adjustments, we plugged the car into the computer and used the LabView software to give the car instructions.
It worked! We made it lurch, and snake, and swerve. It did wildly unsuccessful circles until we programmed each motor just so, which turned out to be telling both motors to move forward with one going slightly faster than the other.
You guys, it was like a weird little pet.
http://www.inkity.com/catalog/product/2/9936/Lizard-On-A-Leash.html
I kind of liked it, especially the part where we could program the robot and then unplug it from the computer and let it roam around.
Our final task with the little rascal was to figure out exactly how far the little jaunts were taking it.
To do this, we used the following measurements of the robots wheels which were as follows: diameter- .17m, the amount of time it moved which was equal to one second, and the speed at which it moved which was 50 mph. After entering this information into the LabView program (the software that helped us program the car) the program told us that the car had moved a total of 28.7 centimeters. To calculate human error, we measured the distance with a rule and came up with 30 centimeters. When calculated, the human error turned out to be 4.4%. (Which is apparently not too shabby.)
All told, I think I’d still rather have a real pet but at least the robot never makes a mess on the rug.