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)

Chapter 4: Building a LEGO Guitar

Entertainment is an important aspect of our lives and well-being. Music is a great hobby and interest for people and it also creates career-making opportunities. As technology continues to advance in our lives, we see it increasingly being used to create music, music experiences, concerts, and more.

This chapter will be combining robotics and music by using the Robot Inventor kit to make a guitar that is playable and codable to our unique needs.

With a gaming industry that was impacted by the awesomeness of Guitar Hero and the likes of many other music games, let's create our own instrument that will allow you to jam out to your favorite song.

Here is what your guitar will look like by the end of this chapter:

Figure 4.1 – The final guitar build

In this chapter, we will break down the guitar build and coding into the following sections:

  • Building the stand (to place the guitar on when not in use...