Robot Challenge

After a couple months with the new NXT kit, I finally made a robot of my own design tonight.

It's not much. Just a simple tricycle, not too different from the Tribot.

The motors are quite large, so it takes some experimenting to attach them. After using L-liftarms to connect to the NXT, it was quite unstable. So I secured the motors to each other at front and back. It's not perfect, but now it's pretty stable.

At the front is a caster made with a pulley. It needs a little improvement, but I threw the whole thing together pretty quickly.

One annoyance is the new wires. The NXT only comes with one of the shortest lengths, which is more than long enough for this robot.

I wrote a simple test program. It has a loop that executes three times. In it are six motor control blocks. The sequence makes it go straight for a bit, then a little turn, etc. Fun to watch, though I was hoping it would annoy the cats a little more. Must download a barking sound to it.

Here's a picture from the bottom.

All in all fairly successful as a platform to add things too, I think, and simple to build. If enough people beg nicely, I'll think about generating building instructions for it, though it probably doesn't add much over the TriBot design.