Lego Mindstorms NXT Robot Contest at South Mountain Community College Fall 2009

Lego Mindstorms NXT Robot Contest at "Be an Engineer Day" at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix Arizona. This was part of the ECE 102 class (Introduction to Engineering).

This is a video taken on my Blackberry after the main competition was completed (so I apologize for the poor quality).

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UPDATE: Let me answer some common questions I've received about the robot:

1. The robot kit used was the original Lego Mindstorm NXT (released in 2006). It is not the Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 kit.

2. No additional Lego components or anything else was used in the creation of the robot. All pieces used were from a standard Lego Mindstorm NXT kit.

3. We used the sound sensor, touch sensor, and a light sensor. We also used all three motors.

4. I no longer have the robot nor the program used for the competition, I'm sorry.

I will update this as I get more questions. Thanks!
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The contest consisted of the following tasks each Lego NXT Robot had to perform.

(1. The robot had to follow a black line.
(2. The robot had to grab or hold a red ball placed on the black line.
(3. The robot then had to follow the black line again and navigate the maze to the red wall at the end.
(4. The robot would then have to drop the ball over the wall onto the other side. The wall was 2.5 inches tall and 1.5 inches thick.

Our robot worked by first following the black line slowly up to the ball. Then, when the ball entered the holder on the front of the robot, we would clap our hands over the sound sensor to tell the robot to raise the holder.

The robot would then proceed to follow the black line through the maze (at a faster rate), until finally coming up to the red wall at the end. The touch sensor on the front of the robot would hit the wall, and therefore tell the robot to stop and drop the ball holder (and the ball) over the wall.

There was a time limit for the contest. Each robot would have to complete the course in one minute and thirty seconds for a maximum score. Our time for the actual contest run was 38 seconds, and we won the contest.

Team Members for the project were:
Christopher Cheuvront
Daniel Gomez
Richard Conway

Thanks for watching!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Lego
• Mindstorms
• NXT
• Robot
• Line Follower
• Ball Grabber
• Engineering
• ECE 102
• SMCC

[jhovalzubera]

can you just tell me the basic coding you used to follow the line? Did you made the program jsut for that track on this video, or a program for any track (waht i want to know if its possible to build a follow black line program that can follow any black line padron)

[Malakh1]

@jhovalzubera

One of the challenges of the contest was that we had no idea what the maze would be like for the competition. We had a practice maze that we used, however, for the actual contest we were only given ~30 minutes of practice time on it before the contest started.

Therefore, the line follower program had to be setup so that it would work for any line. It took a lot of time to perfect and really was the hardest part of the competition.

[handsop]

can i get an e-mail of the program you used on this minus the microphone?

[Malakh1]

I'm sorry but I no longer have the code for the robot. I've since done some computer upgrades and I didn't save any programs for it, thinking I'd never use them again.

The robot kit was property of my college, so I had to disassemble it and give it back after the competition.

[handsop]

how many light sensors do u have attached?

[Malakh1]

It's using only one light sensor.

[97malthe]

i lost my cd-rom can i get the softwer for freeeeeeeeeeeeeee?

[imikev3i]

My robot is better

[pimonspie]

where could i buy a mindstrorms nxt 1.0 or 2.0 for 160 dollars or cheaper

[robodoctors]

dude kids like me can do more charder stuff look at fll.com :P

[Scerab]

I remember doing that in my grade 11 tech class.