With this first tutorial on the Motion Sensor in the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor course we demonstrate the basic algorithm for moving in a straight line with the Motion Sensor. From here all the other algorithms are modifications, and if you know the basic it will be easier to tweak the behavior for your particular challenge
This is a 10 runs tutorial that demonstrates how the accuracy of the robot improves when we use slow acceleration vs fast or default acceleration. Note that the improvement is small. This is not an accurate and consistent robot. No. This is a robot that is all but accurate or consistent. It does not use sensors and you should use sensors. But it is a teaching/demonstration moment for everybody to seen what is it that you can expect if you don't use sensors.
In this video tutorial we are demonstrating the impact of slow and fast acceleration on the robot. In the Scratch program there is an acceleration block for fast and slow acceleration. The robot behaves in different way. Let's explore them so that you know what to use for FIRST LEGO League competitions.
This is a tutorial with 10 runs - 5 of them are slow and 5 of them are fast and we measure how accurate the robot is each time. How consistent is it? Can it arrive consistently on a specific location on the field without the use of the sensors? The quick answer is - No, it can not. But let's see it life
In this video tutorial we use a LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot inventor robot and we do an experiment and a demonstration with it. We demonstrate what is the difference in the consistency and accuracy of the robot when we move slow and when we move fast. For FLL, WRO competitions there is always this balance between moving fast and moving slow.
Continuing from the last tutorial, we demonstrate the consistency and reliability of the robot when we don't user sensors. The result is pretty obvious - the robot is NOT consistent and reliable. It just makes a lot of mistakes
This is the first video tutorial from our course on LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor programming. In this tutorial we will start with how do we move without sensors. We will demonstrate a simple program. Our hope with this tutorial is that you will see why moving without sensors is a bad approach.
One of the easiest ways to improve the accuracy of LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robots is to use acceleration and deceleration when moving. This also applies to LEGO Mindstorms EV3 and LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor and generally to most robots that we know of. This tutorial demonstrates how acceleration and deceleration could be used and what improvement in accuracy and consistency you could expect. This is quite useful for FIRST LEGO League and other robotics competitions.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate how the robot could accomplish the Power Switch mission. Power Switch consists of a cube with a lever and the lever should be rotate to 180 degrees. This mission model was very close to a FIRST LEGO League 2012 competition mission which was called - Oven. The robot, the attachment adn the mission model are built form a single LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor 51515 set and with the tutorial you will learn how to use an active attachment with 2 gear wheels to complete such missions.
This animation demonstrates a vertical lift attachment. This is an attachment that transfer a circular motion from the motors to a linear motion and is a very powerful concept. We demonstrate it with a LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor robot build from 51515 set. This is arguably one of the most complex attachments in this course.
This animated video tutorial demonstrate the use of a lift attachment to accomplish loops mission. It is a lift attachment with a circular motion
This animation demonstrate the use of an LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor attachment to lift a lever of a mission model. The mission model is the Power Switch mission model where you have to move the lever from one side of the mission model to another. The principle of the attachment is powerful and easy to implement for all kinds of missions.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate the user of a quick 'pinless' attachment. As all pinless attachment it is not that they are completely pinless, but that they do not require the "click" of the pins that is often difficult to achieve in a quick pace environment as during FIRST LEGO League competition rounds.
In this video tutorial we look at Vertical Lift Attachments. The attachment, the root and the mission model are all build from LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set. We've found that vertical lift attachments that could lift missions models vertically could be quite useful for FIRST LEGO League competitions. This attachment is one of the more complex attachments and some say it has an "eye opening" mechanism as you can learn so much from it. It uses gear wheels and two levers connected to those gear wheels to lift a part vertically.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate an attachment that can accomplish Drop missions. A drop mission is when you have to move on the FIRST LEGO League field with the robot, reach a mission model, and drop a part in this mission model. First time we saw such missions I think was in FLL 2013. The attachment, the robot and the mission model could be build from a single LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set. The mechanism for dropping works by releasing a lever when the attachment is pushed against the mission model. Check them out.
It all started with the famous 2017 mission for flipping a manhole and it was one of our favorite missions ever. Here in this tutorial we demonstrate the same principle of flipping a part from one side to the other. Sounds interesting, yes it is, yes it is.
Throwing/Shooting is a common challenge in FIRST LEGO League competitions and in this robotics video tutorial we are demonstrating an attachment that you can use to throw/shoot a ball. There have been missions for throwing balls like in bawling, or like in soccer/football. The attachment that we use relies on the properties of the plastics used for the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set - it bends and it throws.
In this video tutorial we look at an active attachment that uses gear wheel and the attachment is general enough to be suitable for reuse. This means that a lot of different missions could be accomplished with the same attachment. The goal of the attachment is to transfer power to a lever through a system of axles and gear wheels. It is interesting that we change the orientation of the gear wheels.
This video tutorial had a different idea than what we recorded. We planned for a push/pull attachment as we've shown such attachments for LEGO Education SPIKE PRIME and LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3. However, the issues with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor set 51515 is that we could not figure out an easy way to build a push pull attachment that meets our criteria for an attachment. Because of this we made a slight modification on the idea and it is again push/pull attachment but not moving in a line but in a circle - circular movement.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate a robot attachment that could be used to lift loops and other objects. Almost every year there is a mission at FIRST LEGO League competitions that involve lifting and the principle is interesting. You can build the attachment, robot and mission model from a single LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set and learn a principle of building an attachment for lifting.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate a Grab attachment build from LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor 51515 set. The goal of the grab attachment is to accomplish the mission of bringing loops back to base without loosing or dropping them when returning. The principle of the grab attachment also demonstrates how to have a a locking mechanism. In this way there is not way to the loop to escape.
This animation demonstrates the use of a Grab Attachment build from LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor 51515 set. Many of the FIRST LEGO League missions could be accomplished by grabbing the mission model and the principles shown here is useful for mission models that look like a loop
This video tutorial is about a detachable attachment. In various FIRST LEGO League competitions there are missions that could be accomplished with an attachment and when you accomplish the mission you must somehow leave the attachment along with the mission model. Probably as a support - most of the time it is as a support. But we've seen some pretty powerful concepts that include things like leaving a clock mechanism that will continue to work for 30 seconds accomplishing the mission.
This is a live video tutorial of an inertia triggered attachment build with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor. The attachment, the robot and the mission model are all built from a single 51515 set. The cool thing about inertia triggered attachments is that they are active and are activated without the use of any motors which means that you have the motors for the other missions at FIRST LEGO League competitions. In the tutorial we demonstrate and explain how such attachments works and how they could be used.
On every FIRST LEGO League competition and generally robotics competitions with LEGO robots, we build attachments to accomplish missions and we must accomplish the missions in a limited amount of time. Most of the time we can not accomplish the missions with a single attachment and we have to change attachments. This is where building robot attachments that are easy to remove really makes sense. In this tutorial we discuss some of the things that should be considered in the building Easy to Detach modules and attachments
This short animation demonstrates a really useful principle for FIRST LEGO League competition and this is how to use the Inertia of the robot to trigger an attachment that will do the work for us. It is very useful as we don't have to use the motors of the robot and we can afford to use the motors for other things.
In this video tutorial we continue the exploration of pinless attachments and how to add them and remove them in a quick fashion. We've done this for SPIKE Prime and for EV3 and we will provide some other references in the lesson in the course. The idea of an attachment below the robot is that sometime, during FIRST LEGO League competitions we have to bring a mission model from one place of the field to other. Basically push it.