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)

Adding the color sensor

Let's begin to frame up the body a bit. In this section, you are going to build the front panel of Plankton that will house the color sensor, to give some interaction with the environment.

For this section, you will need the following pieces:

  • Three teal 3x3 Technic pieces
  • Seven blue connector pins
  • Four teal 9L beams
  • One color sensor
  • Twelve black connector pins

Before we add the front plate, you are going to add a couple of pieces to the top of the robot frame you have assembled so far while everything is exposed. Find one of the 3x3 teal Technic pieces and three blue connector pins. These pieces are illustrated in the following image:

Figure 9.22 – Parts layout

Add the 1L side of the blue connector pins to the three holes of the top motor. Make sure before you do all of this that your motor is aligned to 0 as far as possible. Locate the gray dot and align it the best you can. Slide the teal...