Book Image

Build and Code Creative Robots with LEGO BOOST

By : Ashwin Shah
Book Image

Build and Code Creative Robots with LEGO BOOST

By: Ashwin Shah

Overview of this book

LEGO BOOST is a feature-rich creative toolbox that helps kids to develop science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills in a fun way. The LEGO BOOST kit consists of motors, sensors, and more than 840 LEGO pieces to bring various multifunctional robots to life. This book will take you on an interesting and enjoyable journey where you will have fun building robots while developing your problem-solving and logical thinking skills. This book is an end-to-end guide that will take you from a beginner to expert level of robot building with LEGO BOOST and Scratch. Starting with the unboxing and a brief introduction to LEGO BOOST, you'll quickly get your first robotic model up and running. You'll understand how to use the electronic and non-electronic components and have fun building a range of intriguing robotics projects with increasing complexity and advanced functionality. Throughout the book, you'll work on a variety of amazing projects, such as building your own R2D2, a fictional character from Star Wars, that will pique your curiosity to learn robotics and help you explore the full potential of the LEGO BOOST kit. Once you've had fun working with the projects, you'll be introduced to an interesting challenge for you to solve by yourself! By the end of this book, you'll have gained the skills to build creative robotics projects with the LEGO BOOST creative toolbox, and have built on your logical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
14
Bonus Chapters

Understanding some important terminologies

Before we learn more about gears and perform this chapter's activities, let's learn about some important terminologies:

  • Drive gear: A gear that is connected to the motor.
  • Driven gear: A gear that is connected to the drive gear.
  • Mesh: This is when the drive and driven gears are connected to each other.
  • Gear ratio: The ratio of number of teeth of driving gear / number of teeth of driven gear.
  • Torque: The amount of force needed to bring your wheel into motion.
  • Gear up: When your gear ratio is greater than 1, this is known as the gear up mechanism. With gear up, your driven gear moves at a faster speed than the drive gear and offers less torque.
  • Gear down: When your gear ratio is less than 1, this is known as the gear down mechanism. With gear down, your driven gear moves at a slower speed than the drive gear and offers more torque.

Basically, whenever you need more power – for example, to...