Created 4 Mar 2005 at 19:32 UTC by zappepcs, last modified 26 Feb 2006 at 08:22 UTC by zappepcs.

Homepage: http://www.brickshelf.com/

Notes:

Start date: Long time ago - today is 03/03/2005
Goal: Autonomous robot made of LEGO parts (Mostly)

"Jack" is my first attempt at what I have long wanted to do... build an autonomous mobile robot. In fact, I've been thinking about this on and off since 1986 or before. After finding the DPRG, some initial investigations, project estimations...

I settled on building with LEGO parts as I had no available shop or tooling, and didn't want to spend tons of time just trying to figure out how to compensate for physical compromises in parts vs. desired physical configurations. It turns out that a lot of time was spent with the LEGO to get the basic physical design structurally sound. (NOTE: building with LEGO pieces is much more cathartic than I had every anticipated)

After experiementing a bit, and changing design goals to a larger more robust LEGO robot, I ran straight into the brick wall of sensor and motor limitations of the RCX programmable brick. Still wanting to stick with the LEGO physical structure, this is the story of my trials and tribulations resulting from that decision:

Problems to overcome:

- Physical size/weight and LEGO parts non-permanence
- Lack of sensor inputs and motor outputs
- Lack of interface to more common real-world sensors such as sonar and IR
- Lack of interfaces to standard motor controllers (h-bridge) and to R/C servos
- How to mix LEGO and non-lego parts in a way that is aesthetically pleasing (hey, its important to me)

You can see progress pics at http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=96749

Description: Trevails of building a large LEGO robot

This project has the following developers:

• zappepcs is a Developer.