Chris Anderson from Wired Mag gives a great article covering some issues concerning Programming environment of Lego Mindstorms robots using different programming languages.
For anyone who’s ever programmed, there’s nothing better for understanding programming logic than properly tabbed and commented code, all in a column of text as God intended. And for your kids, there’s no time like the present to introduce real programming, using coding conventions that will be as relevant in the decades to come as they were in decades past.
Simple and straight advantage of RobotC platform - coding in plain C, with well written Documentation on each function used for NXT’s. For the last month, RobotC upgraded from v1.05 to 1.10, so there are some improvements and updates from Carnegie Mellon University developers.
A great news is that for our projects on Robotics and Automation subject, we have switched from Microsoft Robotics Studio to RobotC due to some reasons:
- Lack of documentation on MRS (Professional MRS from Wrox will be published at the end of the year)
- Missing some simulation sensors’ files for NXT (can’t test all the capacities of sensors without robot)
- Not all of students run Windows (but it can be managed via Wine)
- Full access to encoders and sensors data in simple programming manner.
As more sensors are about to come in stock, I believe NXT will become one of the easiest ways of implementing Robotics concepts and algorithms for students.
Cyprus
Cyprus, Frederick University, Programming, Robotics
Some of you already know that for my senior Bachelor project I decided to do Robotics & Automation, since it is a brand new field of study for me.
Due to the fact that this project includes a lot of sensor fusion techniques and algorithms for positioning, I had to go through lots of IEEE research papers, since our university library in Limassol doesn’t have many books on the subject.
What I noticed was the fact that most of the research work goes from Northern Europe and Northern part of the USA:
- Germany
- USA (particularly UMC and MIT research centres)
- Finland
This is just a shallow list of countries involved in the research, however there are more to add. I’m not taking Japan or South Korea in account since this field of science is quiet popular there and it’s Asia - it’s completely different story. The main question of this article is: will this type of computer science and engineering become popular in Cyprus?
Read more…
Blogging, Cyprus, FIT
Cyprus, Personal, Robotics, Thoughts and ideas
After few days of surging, I came out with few NXT programming solutions:
- RobotC
Basic C-language interface from umc.edu, which works with NXT and RCX model
- Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS)
Nice and easy way of programming Robots with GUI interface, with almost no interaction with code.
- LeJOS
For Java programmers: NXT and RCX Java Open Source interface with simple Java Eclipse installation Plug-in.
To be continued…
Gadgets, Links
Lego, NXT, Programming, Robotics
Due to the faculty specifics, most of the forth course classmates took Robotics & Automation course this semester.
For catching up the idea of automation procedures, the teacher gave us a small NXT Robot to play around. I couldn’t remember when was the last time I did these Lego stuff, however this NXT amazed me a lot.
This small “toy” is equipped with:
- Light Sensor (black and white spectrum)
- Ultrasound Sensor
- Bump Sensor
- Sound Sensor
Lots of things to play around, especially taking in account the programmatic aspects of NXT generation and Open Source C compiler for these robots: RobotC project.
Gadgets
Cyprus, Frederick University, Frederick Universtiy, Interests, IT, Lego, NXT, Robotics