Slowly, but Steadily

Well, 3 months have passed, so I'll tell you what's happened.

A bunch of coding for drivers has been done in NXC by Matt Allen after a very nice, long chain of responses on the Mindboards forum from my original post. It's good to know the NXT community caters so fast to people who are in need of help.

Meanwhile, I was also trying to follow Dexter Industries Wifi Week tutorials on using the Wifi Sensor. However, those were unsuccessful right from the start too. I keep getting an "unexpected warm boot (possibly low battery)" error. However, I am currently talking with a DI professional, so hopefully, everything will work itself out.

Apart from all that, I was getting down the basics of bluetooth. In RobotC, I whipped up a quick remote control program that allows me to control the speed of another NXT vehicle with a Ultrasonic sensor and can make it turn left or right with the arrow keys. So that's definitely a start. I think I'll be focusing more on the swarm aspect of the project through bluetooth for now, staying in the autonomous realm. Later, when I get the hang of the Wifi Sensor, I'll make the shift to a user controlled swarm.

In other news...

I recieved an NXT omniwheel keychain courtesy of Xander. I was one of the three winners in his NXT haiku contest, which was pretty neat.
You can his post HERE

There is also a chance to win a free DI dCompass sensor.

Just head on over to the Guy NXT door blog and subscribe, and you'll be entered in a random lottery for the dCompass sensor. His blog is HERE

One last thing before ending this post. My team recently competed in the FTC State Championship last weekend. We were 3rd in the 5th round, but after the 6th, we dropped to 7th. However, the 3rd place team did choose us as their alliance partner. Therefore, when all is said and done, you can say we safely came in 3rd place.

And that about wraps it up. Till next time.

NXT Wifi Sensor by Dexter Industries

So, after some midterm and final tests are out of the way, I'm back and ready to play.

Well, for Christmas, I got the Dexter Industries Wifi Sensor.

I'll will be using it to start a new project in swarm robotics, and will post every now and then with updates on my project. When everything is done and under wraps, I will post it as a new project under the Projects page. But for now, the details.

I am going to dabble in User-Based Swarms, where the user will have access to all the coordinates and sensor feeds from the robots in the swarm. The user will be able to readily control positions, rotation, and other actions of all of the robots either individually, or collectively.

Step 1: Following a tutorial. I will be using NXC for this project, as my RobotC subscription is already half done and lasts only for a year, and because NXC is free. I will create a simple web server and learn all the essential commands required for communicating with the web server through the NXT.

Step 2: Start building a Ruby-on-Rails application. This application will be the user interface, in which anyone who I have given the password can log in and mess around with the position of the robot and see how it works. Later on through this project I will write a post concerning the specifics of this user interface, and maybe include a couple of diagrams.

Step 3: Launch. Simply launch the website, and let my family be the debuggers, looking for ways to hack/break the code I have written (my family is pretty good with computers).

Step 4: Purchase more Wifi Sensors. As of right now, I am using only 1 robot because I have only 1 Wifi Sensor. Later on, I will purchase more, and hopefully connect all of them to the application I have built. Then a true swarm will be born

Step 5: Setup Bluetooth connections between the multiple NXT's. This way, while there is no user logged in, I can let the NXT's roam freely in the environment I have given them, and let them do the multitasking in order to not hit objects, or play follow the leader, or any simple random task. This will create an autonomous swarm, which I will run, again, when no one is logged in.

Well, those are the basics. I will start the tutorial this week and pick up on the basics. If this project proves to be too long (I am off to college next year), then I will just post some theory about it, and diagram what I was thinking of doing-stuff like that.

Till the tutorial is done, then.



P.S. I got Battlefield 3 and MW3 for Christmas too, in case anyone was wondering...

Lateral Thinking

I read a book by Edward de Bono called Lateral Thinking and it really gets a guy thinking about the smallest of problems that can be solved by looking at things, well, laterally. The problem I want to talk about is the 3 cups and 3 knives problem, in which 3 knives have to be placed on 3 cups in such a way that another cup can be place on top of the 3 knives. The solution is easily found on YouTube, but what I wanted to address is a slight deviation. I am a big juggler, and found myself alone with 3 juggling clubs and a big exercise ball. Thus, I took two minutes, and created a solution to the problem with clubs on a sphere by getting the center of gravity perfect. Here are the goods:

And, a little video to prove it is standing by itself, with no extra aid.

The main reason I brought this up, however, is due to the FTC(First Tech Challenge) competition my team just competed in today. My team's robot had the most LEGO, which most people disagree with. But I think laterally, and tell others to picture it like a multistage rocket. A part falls off after being used, and can be recycled if necessary. In the end, we came in 4th, with some of the most unique strategies used.

To get anywhere in robotics, creative thinking has got to be used. Big companies are already on top of the ideas of today, but the next generation has to think laterally to help along the ideas of tomorrow.