RoboJam

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, with fixing errors in the NXT C# Wrapper to writing tutorials.

As it stand the wrapper is at a stage where it can be used for the RoboJam, there is still plenty of room for improvement but for this even it should be sufficient. The Wrapper can be found

The tutorials have been slow process, trying to figure out what tasks are best to use that are not to simply but still challenge the participant. We have managed to introduce most aspects of the NXT in both using C# and using the NXT-G programming environment. As always there tutorials could be added upon for future events.

The competition tasks also proved a bit of a challenge. These task should test the participant skills and knowledge that they would have gained throughout the weekend.

The final date for the event has not been confirmed yet but we are hoping to have it happen sometime during October if possible.

This week has been spend completing the Lego NXT C# Wrapper.

The wrapper has implemented all direct commands, and a few other commands that will give the user details about the brick(e.g BTAdress, Name).

An example program has also been created to give users some idea of how to use the wrapper.

The wrapper and the example code can be found

The past couple of weeks have involved getting more familiar with with the NXT and the NXT-G software (used for programming the NXT). I have also been working on the tasks for the first day of the event.

The NXT-G software isn’t the most intuitive software to use. It seems difficult to do the most tasks (for me that is).

The tasks for day1 consist of getting the participant implement simple behaviors such as obstacle avoidance and line following. Each section will include “Extra” for the participant to try if they finish ahead of time. most of the tasks for day1 have been completed, and it is now just a matter of completing the tutorials for each section.

I was also able to find a handy tool that generate build instructions for a large variety of Lego kits, including the Lego Minstrom kit.

This can be found at http://ldd.lego.com/

The task currently only involve programming with the NXT-G software. We are also aiming to get some tasks that will involve C# programming into the first day.

This week started off a little unproductive, I had a small storage problem. Whiles I was trying to delete my Linux partition, I managed to delete my boot-loader. This meant a day was wasted for re-installing Windows and setting up my computer again.

On the positive side, I was able to test out a few of the tutorials made and they seem to be easy to follow. A couple of correction have been made to directory paths, but for the most part they worked well.

This week was about figuring out how to use the NXT-G software to program the Lego NXT Brick.

The Software its self is a bit of a pain to setup for 64-bit machines (but that is why I have wrote a small tutorial for it), but once installed it works as you would expect.

When I started off using the visual programming language I was a bit lost. I was trying to do ‘simple’ tasks and failing to do so. I think this was down to jumping straight in, instead of reading some documentation first. The main task with using this visual programming language is to figure out/remember what each ‘block’ does, and how to use them.

The software comes with some basic tutorials which helps with some basic programming, but they don’t seem to touch on and ‘advanced’ topics such as obstacle avoidance. However, the tutorials do show you how each sensor works, the capabilities and some applications.

With the tasks for the first day of the event, I believe it would be better to try and stick with simple tasks, that require simple robots (maybe some more complex tasks for participants who more quickly). It would seem that building models such as the Robot Arm take up to an hour. The main focus of this event is to show people that programming robots to be autonomous or to tele-operate them is simple and easy, for this reason I believe that there should be minimal time spent on construction and more time spent on learning how to program the NXT Bricks using the on-board programmer, NXT-G Software, or Visual C#.

So what was the plan for this week then?

This week was all about finding other similar events, look at what tasks they do, and see if any can be used.

What did I do?

So for this week i have been reading up on papers for the RoboJam.  These papers are from the ‘Teaching Robotics Teaching with Robotics’ workshop.

Most of these papers seem to focus on teaching problem solving with children in primary and secondary, ages ranging between 8 to 15 (give or take a few years). The idea for the RoboJam is that focuses in the range of people 15 and above. Although these papers don’t all focuses on this age range, they have given me some ideas on how to structure the even on a day to day basis.

I did a little more as well

Whiles not researching for similar events, I have spent time figuring out equipment works, what doesn’t work, and what we need to get for the RoboJam to work. This will be carried on throughout the weeks to come.

Oh and of course I have spent time setting up the computer and all that jazz 😀

Things that did not go to well

After testing (turning on and seeing if stuff worked) the Lego NXT bricks I found that more then half did not work correctly. Some of the problems included:

• The screens not working
• sound not working

Things that went well

Lunch.

After updating the firmware all the Lego Brick’s sound seemed to work fine, leaving with only 5 Bricks that had screen issues.

What happens now?

Next week I will be looking at deciding what tasks will be in the training day of the RoboJam.

At least once a week I will update the blog, maybe more if something either goes really wrong or goes really right. I would like to be able to do it more, but we shall have to wait and see what time is left available.