LEGO Theory and Practice

Mark Green School of Creative Media

Introduction
Can

do a wide range of things with LEGO adding motors, sensors and computers gives us even more possibilities the question is what do we do with this? Its fun to play with LEGO, but where do we want to take it? In addition, how do we build fun things?

Expressive Robots
One

thing is building robots that can express themselves not just a mechanical thing, but something we can relate to, something with emotions a good example of this is Feelix, a LEGO robot the expresses feelings:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~chili/feelix/feelix_home. htm

Feelix

Feelix

Feelix
Feelix

has been used to study how people recognize emotions could not recognize as easily as with real humans, but fairly close most of the time Feelix could react to people through its touch sensors (on feet) emotion based on frequency and strength of touch

PETS
Personal

Electronic Teller of Stories Robots built from LEGO, designed by a team of adults and children Develop a robot that shows emotions and feelings, can be used to assist with telling stories Robot acts out part of the story, controlled by computer to give expressions at appropriate times

PETS
LEGO

used as the robot skeleton and to provide the motion Skeleton is covered with cloth and other soft things to make a huggable toy Velcro and glue used to attach skin to the robot Quick way to produce responsive toy without getting into a lot of engineering

PETS

PETS

PETS
Shows

how LEGO can be used to prototype intelligent toys Building out of raw components, plastic and metal, can be difficult and requires special tools and skills LEGO can be used by most people, doesnt require anything special Wont be the best looking, but quick and easy

Building with LEGO

Two

general approaches:

Start by deciding what you are going to build, figure out how to build it Start by putting things together and see what you end up with

Most

LEGO projects are a combination of these approaches Rarely know exactly how to build something before you start

Building with LEGO

Good

LEGO builders claim that you need three skills:

Mechanics Electronics Software

Also

need some patience and willingness to try different things It wont work right the first few (many) times you try to build it

Mechanics
Need

to know how to put the blocks together to get the structure you need Needs to be strong, so it doesnt fall apart when it moves Need to understand how to make LEGO move, how to use wheels, gears and axles Most of this is gained through experience with making things

Electronics
Understand

how sensors work, how they can be used to control the robot Understand how motors can be used to move the robot How to connect the motors and sensors to the LEGO blocks, make the best of the limited resources Use one motor to produce several motions

Software
Write

the programs that make the robot

work Read the sensor values, produce the signals required for the motors Plan how long each motor should run, how it should respond to sensors Produce the robots behavior, how it will respond to its environment

Example
Look

at a very simple robot, example of how we build and program them Based on Tippy from Brian Bagnalls book Core LEGO Mindstorms Programming Like all good robot projects, this one didnt go as planned! Tried to follow instructions from book, but the robot wouldnt fit together

Tippy

Tippy

Tippy
Tippy

is about as simple as it gets Two wheeled direct drive robot, there are skid plates at the front and back to keep the robot from tipping over There is a touch sensor at the front to detect collisions It can only detect collisions at the front, but the robot does go backwards!

Tippy

Tippy
The

touch sensor is quite small, need something bigger to detect collision The bumper mechanism at the front does this, based on a hinged lift arm A wide axle is attached to the lift arm, to increase the range of the sensor When something hits the axle the lift arm hits the touch sensor, signaling the collision

Tippy
Two

motors are attached to the plate at the bottom, this is not a good design! Weight of the robot is on the wheels, wheels connected to motors, motors connected to top of plate Too easy for motors to come off of the plate Would be better to attach the motors to the bottom of the plate

Tippy
Problem:

when I tried to attach the understructure of the robot to the RCX I found it was too wide! Our RCX is narrower, by one row then the one used in the book Had to design a platform on the bottom of the RCX to mount the structure on Result: robot is lopsided

Lesson
LEGO

rarely goes together the way you want it to, must be prepared to improvise This is the creative part of the project, figuring out how to make the whole thing fit together Be prepared to rethink your design and build interfaces between the different components of the design

Software
We

need to make the robot do something It needs some software for this What will we make the robot do??

Its default action is to move forward, both of its motors should spin in the forward direction When it hits something it should back up and turn so it no longer hits something

Going

forward is easy, but how do we

turn?

Software
Neither

wheel turns, there doesnt appear to be a way to turn the robot But the two wheels are independent, each have a separate motor We can make the robot turn by spinning one wheel forward and the other wheel backwards Only do this for a short period of time

Software
Software

consists of two parts First part just drives the robot forward Turns on the two motors and sets both of them to forward Second part only runs when there is a collision It backs up the robot and turns it, then starts it moving forward again

Tippy Program

Software
The

left side turns on the two motors and sets their direction to forward The right side is connected to the touch sensor It changes the motor direction and waits for 0.5 second Set direction so one motor is forward and the other reverse

Software
Again

wait for 0.5 second Then set both motors to forward We dont measure how far the robot moves or turns, we just wait for 0.5 seconds Good enough most of the time, but could still get in trouble

Summary
We

have a robot that basically works Can be put together in about 20 minutes, most of the effort is finding the right parts But, neither the software or structure is very robust It can easily fall apart and it can easily get stuck trying to recover from collisions

Summary
Due

to the modification I made I didnt have enough parts to finish the robot Original design had a plate above the lift arm, but I ran out of plates Without the plate the arm bounces and causes the robot to turn too much I later made a plate out of two smaller plates, and it now works better

LEGO Theory
If

we are going to build things with LEGO we need to understand how it works Start by looking at the various LEGO parts and then move on to some of the standard structures Look at some of the standard design and solutions Get you started on your own designs

LEGO Theory
The

main structural units are bricks, plates and beams The size of a LEGO piece is measured in studs, the little round things on the top Bricks are usually one or two studs wide and from one to eight studs long Bricks are used to build up structure, they have no other purpose

LEGO Theory
Plates

are thin bricks, 1/3 the thickness of

a brick Plates can be used to build structure, but they are usually used to connect other units or add strength to a structure Beams are one stud wide, even number of studs long, with holes running through them

LEGO Theory
If

a beam is n studs long, it has n-1 holes Axles and pins can be placed in the holes, so beams are often an important part of a robots chassis Since beams are thin they often need to be reinforced or the structure becomes too weak

LEGO Theory
Pins

are short and round and fit into the holes in beams Two types of pins

Free turning pins, can rotate inside the hole Friction pins, dont rotate

Pins

can be used to attach parts, or to attach wheels and gears to the robots chassis

LEGO Theory
Wheels,

axles and gears are used for movement A wide range of wheels, the larger the wheel the faster the robot will move Axles are measured in studs, even though they have no studs Gear are used to change the speed of motion, or change its direction

LEGO Theory
There

are a number of other parts used for special purposes and decorations Lift arms are beams that dont have studs They can be connected to other parts using pins and axles Pulleys can be used to transmit force, but are not as reliable as axles and gears

Structures
Mindstorms

comes with two motors, and the RCX can only handle three We can only have a limited number of independent motions, one per motor In addition, motors rotate, what if we want a linear motion, or one with a limited rotation angle? Also we cannot control the speed of the motor

Structures
The

LEGO motor consists of a motor, plus a gear chain There is no way to control the speed of this motor, we can only control the strength That is, we can increase the amount of force the motor produces, carry heavier loads, but cannot change speed

Structures
This

introduces the need for a number of structures to produce different types of motion:

Straight linear motion Repeated linear motion Restricted rotations Faster or slower speed Axis or rotation

Structures
The

structures that produce these motions contain combinations of gears and axles Gears can be used to change speed and axis of rotation The size of a gear is measure by the number of teeth it has The standard gear sizes are 8, 12, 16, 24 and 40 teeth

Structures
The

standard gears mesh together, tooth for tooth This can be used to control speed of rotation using different gear sizes Consider a 8 tooth and 24 tooth gear connected together, both with their own axles Start by turning the axle on the 8 tooth gear

Structures

Structures
Every

complete rotation of the axle will move 8 teeth on the larger gear This gear has 24 teeth, so we need 3 rotations of the smaller gear for one rotation of the larger gear Similarly, one rotation of the larger gear will produce 3 rotations of the smaller one Thus we can go faster or slower

Structures
Note:

if we speed up there is less force, if we slow down there is more force Need to consider what you are trying to move What happens if we want to change the axis of rotation? The motor is facing one way, but we want the rotation in a different direction Two ways of doing this

Structures
One

way is to use a worm gear and the other is to use a crown gear A crown gear meshes with a regular gear at a 90 degree angle When the crown gear is turned the regular gear with turn, but the axis of rotation has been shifted by 90 degrees

Structures Worm Gear

Structures Crown Gear

Structures
There

are several ways of doing linear or straight line motion One is to use a crankshaft mechanism There are only enough parts to make one crankshaft It converts a rotational motion into a linear one by pushing and pulling an axle as it rotates

Structures - Crankshaft

Structures
The

other way of doing this is to use a gear rack, a plate with gear teeth on the top Gear racks are attached to plates or beams and then meshed with a gear When the gear rotates the gear rack with move forwards or backwards Maximum distance depends upon length of gear rack

Structures Gear Plate

Structures
Our

Tippy robot used two motors so it could both move and turn To turn the robot we turned the wheels in opposite directions We only have 2 motors, so using both for moving the robot means we can have no other motion We need to be able to turn and move using only one motor

Structures
Moving

with one motor isnt hard, connect both wheels to the same axle Turning is the hard part, how can we make the two wheels move differently with just one motor? The solution is to use something called a differential Allows the two wheels to operate independently

Differential

Structures
The

differential itself rotates, a gear meshing with one of its outside gears provides the motion The gear structure inside the differential provides the interesting part The differential will normally turn both axles, and the wheels attach to it This provides the forward motion for the robot

Structures
But

the two axles are independent, if one axle stops rotating the other will keep going This can provide our turning mechanism If when we reverse direction only one wheel keeps turning the robot will turn The differential can handle this, but how do we stop one of the wheels from turning?

Structures
The

solution is to use a ratchet A ratchet is based on a gear and a block that lets the wheel turn in one direction but not in the other We can add a ratchet to one side of our differential When moving forward both wheels will turn, with moving backwards the ratchet will stop one of the wheels

Structures - Ratchet