Little Joe - LDD file now online

The LDD file for Little Joe is now available online here.

If you do build Little Joe, please let me know how you get on.

Little Joe - a Lego robot biped

This is Little Joe - a Lego robot biped walker.

He was originally supposed to be my entry for the NXTlog biped competition, but didn't get him finished in time. However, I am mightily pleased with him, even if he did take longer to get walking than planned.

Little Joe was inspired by one of Joe Nagata's excellent walkers (link to site at bottom of page), but the design has altered pretty significantly from the original - I think the feet and ankle elements are about the only unaltered sections left.

Anyway, Little Joe is named as a tip o' the hat to Joe Nagata for being one of the best NXT builders out there and an inspiration to the rest of us.

First Day at Robot School

Ok, so it's not Mindstorms.

But it is Lego, and they are robots...

My latest creation is a bit off-topic for this blog, but I like it. First vignette I've made and I'm quite pleased with it.

SynKrow - a lesson in humility in robot form

I've had enough of this robot, so I've just decided to take some photos and take it to bits. I don't often give up on stuff, but this has been months worth of kicking ideas about, building, rebuilding and tinkering - and it still won't work. Very frustrating.

Saw a few synchro-drive robots on tinterweb and liked the idea of building one. Bought 3 more turntables on Bricklink and started going.

Fairly quickly abandoned my original idea of 4-wheel drive, and moved to having power going to the diagonally-opposite wheels. This worked fine, and SynKrow drives in a very reliable straight line.

However, getting those wheels to turn direction without the robot slipping round has proved absolutely impossible. The turntables turn, but the robot slips and ends up pointing off the true right-angle turn I wanted. I've now tried about six different methods of turning the turntables, or positioning the wheels - the best version is in the pictures, with the wheel 'contact patches' mounted as close to the turning centre of the turntables as I could get. However, even with this setup the robot moves around rather than sitting solidly still as the 4 wheels shift orientation.

I give up. If anyone has a decent design for a synchro drive robot like this, point me in the right direction so I can put myself out of my misery...

UniBot 2: LDD file now online

The LDD file for UniBot 2 is now available on NXTlog here.

If anyone builds UniBot please let me know how you get on, and I'd be intrigued to see what you use it as a base for.

For anyone who hasn't seen this robot before, the good thing about it is that it 'frees-up' a motor from turning duties - giving you two motors to build mobile robots with higher functionality than if you'd used two robots for turning.

UniBot 2 uses only pieces out of the NXT retail set, and should still leave you plenty of bits for the rest of your robot.