Book Image

Smart Robotics with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor

By : Aaron Maurer
Book Image

Smart Robotics with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor

By: Aaron Maurer

Overview of this book

LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor is the latest addition to the LEGO MINDSTORMS theme. It features unique designs that you can use to build robots, and also enable you to perform activities using the robot inventor application. You'll begin by exploring the history of LEGO MINDSTORMS, and then delve into various elements of the Inventor kit. Moving on, you'll start working on different projects which will prepare you to build a variety of smart robots. The first robotic project involves designing a claw to grab objects, and helps you to explore how a smart robot is used in everyday life and in industry. The second project revolves around building a working guitar that can be played and modified to meet the needs of the user. As you advance, you'll explore the concept of biomimicry as you discover how to build a scorpion robot. In addition to this, you'll also work on a classic robotic challenge by building a sumobot. Throughout the book, you'll come across a variety of projects that will provide you with hands-on experience in building creative robots, such as building a Dragster, Egg Decorator, and Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants. By the end of this LEGO book, you'll have got to grips with the concepts behind building a robot, and also found creative ways to integrate them using the application based on your creative insights and ideas.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Writing the code

For this build, we are going to focus on the remote app coding only. This will be a program that will allow you to control the robot using the remote-control feature of the app to move the claw right, left, up, and down, and to open and close the claw.

Overall, this program is fairly simple to develop and is created to be easily adaptable for you to remix to meet your needs. Use this sample code to make sure everything works, and then begin to tweak the code to make it work to your needs. Make sure you have the proper ports plugged in, and then move into the code.

Identifying the ports

If you have not plugged in your motors yet, then let's get them plugged in to the proper ports. You will plug the motor that moves the claw to the right and left to motor port C. The motor that controls the opening and closing of the claw will plug into port D. The two motors that control the arm of the claw to go up and down will use ports B and F. Once you have the motors...