Improving the EV3 Competition Robot by Mic Lowne Pro Preview

In Episode 58 we introduced you to an LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Modular robot. Mic Lowne wrote to us and had that robot remade, because it used too many blue lego pins and could not be build using one EV3 kit.

  • #100
  • 09 Aug 2015
  • 6:08

Your turn

Did you like the remade robot? I would love to hear your suggestions for improving the copetition robot even more!

Let us know in the comments below!

EV3 Competition Robot by Mic Lowne

The instructions for building the improved EV3 Competition Robot by Mic Lowne

English

In Episode 58 we built a competition robot. The robot had a flaw and it was that you couldn't build it using a single LEGO set because it used too many long pins. Mike Clone wrote to us and made a competition robot based on our construction and today we're going to compare them.

Both robots are fairly the same and do well on the field but have little differences. For instance if we take a look at Mike's front robot it has a wider piece and does not have this bar here which protects the light sensors from the surrounding light as you may see here. As a matter of fact this makes the robot maneuverable, it can go through obstacles because it does not have this piece here where as our robot would get stuck with the obstacles. If we take a look at the robots from the side they're almost identical except for this piece here that is missing, the skirt. If we turn the robots at the back Mike's robot does not have this piece here which helps him gain maneuverability over our robot. His back piece is stronger whereas our piece wiggles back and forth and if you attach some attachments on the back they will be more stable. On our robot we have this here mechanism for the cable management. It is always good to manage your cables. Whereas on this robot here you cannot add this mechanism because there is no space but maybe you can get your cables from here and it will be okay. Another thing you should know is weight. Now we're going to weigh the robots and see the differences. First it's Mike's robot let's put it like this. Mike's robot weighs 739g, next we're going to put the FLLCasts' robot on the scale and the FLLCasts' robot weighs 745g, that is a difference of 7g, it's not much but it's something you should know about. Going over obstacles is the next thing we're going to talk about and as we said before Mike's robot does not have bars here, the FLLCasts' robot has this part and on the front we have this part that guides the sensors, that does not let light interfere with the sensors but Mike's robot does not have it here so Mike's robot can go over obstacles more easily but we have problematic parts when we turn the robot. This thing here sticks out a lot and can get stuck with some obstacles that you may want to go over them whereas here everything is flat and there's nothing you can get stuck. If you go like this my finger gets stuck here whereas on this robot you can slide more or less over the obstacles. As we have the robots turned over we're going to talk about these parts here. These two parts and these two parts and we have them here on both robots so these parts here are turned 90 degrees.

Let's try and break Mike's robot first. Pulling it is impossible and with twisting you break the construction on the back. The FLLCasts' robot there is some gap here generated when you pull but it is fairly hard to break it and if you twist you will break the construction in the same place. It does not matter if the bars are facing right side up or 90 degrees. In conclusion both robots are very good. They have some differences, for instance Mike's robot here on the back is more stable and our robot here moves so it is better to attach on Mike's robot. On the front Mike's robot does not have this skirt here that protects his light sensors from the outside surrounding light. The FLLCast s' robot has a problematic pin here which will get stuck over any obstacles that it would try to overcome. The main problem on the FLLCasts' robot is that you do not have enough blue pins to build it. For instance here as you can see they are sticking out and we cannot use them properly we could have used the black pins instead of the blue ones and friction over nonfriction in Mike's construction. He has used nonfriction pins where he did not need extra stability, that left him with more friction to build more with. Thanks for watching, if you have ideas submit them down below in the comments section and don't be shy to let us know what you think about this video. Bye.

Courses and lessons with this Tutorial

This Tutorial is used in the following courses and lessons

Image for FIRST LEGO League Competition. Constructing and Programming a Robot Base
  • 42
  • 249:53
  • 10
Image for Constructing a robot base
  • 10
  • 6
  • 5
  • 3d_rotation 9