You could use the LEGO Steel Balls as a third wheel on the robot. It is a caster wheel. But this is steel and as we know from basic existence on this planet, where there is steel there is also rust. The steel ball could get quite rusty and this could have an influence on the behaviour of the robot

Turning with the Gyro Sensor on a specified angle and stopping there have never been easy. It is not going to get any better. However, this is not a problem of the Gyro sensor. The problem is in the way we develop our programs.

It's a box! It's a robot! It's a box robot.  Box robots are very popular on different robotics competitions involving LEGO Mindstorms like the FIRST LEGO League or World Robotics Olympiad. Let's start with a brief introduction and continue in the next videos with explanation on the features of the robot and why such robots are frequently used.

Sometimes robot builders are so overwhelmed with the process of constructing a robot that they forget two very important parts. The brick should be accessible and the cables should not get in the way. These are referred by us as Brick Accessibility and Cable Management.    

In this video we discuss how do we transfer power from the motors that are "inside the robot box" to the gear wheels that are "outside the robot box". 

We should how to build a frame that could hold the attachments for specific competition missions. This frame is added in a pinless manner. This means very fast and easy without any glitches of the pins.

Without the use of any motor, you can still accomplish a number of missions using passive attachments. You can still pull/push on different levers using only a beam or two connected to the frame.

This is the first Active Pinless Attachment for the Box competition robot. The attachment is placed on the top of the robot and is controlled by one of the motors. 

This is a third example for adding an active attachment. This third attachment is now connected to the wheel at the front of the robot. Again, the attachment could be easily extended. 

One more example for an active attachment with a system of gear wheels. This time the system is constructed so that the attachment could lift heavy objects. 

Here we start with a second box robot that we would like to build. It is in a way improvement to the first robot and we would take a look at its features. 

Cable management is very important on each competition. Cables could get in the way of attachments, levers, different wheels and so on. Brick accessibility is also very important. Do not forget that the brick should be charged from time to time and that you should also be able to access the buttons. 

With the EV3 Mindstorms set you receive three motors. Two are large and one is medium. These three motors could be used in different configurations and in this video we show how to use the motors on the second box robot for competitions that we build. 

One of the very good things about box robots is that you could easily align with them both to the front, to the back or to the rear sides. This aligning is helpful for FIRST LEGO League, World Robotics Olympiad or other robotics competitions with LEGO Mindstorms EV3/NXT robots. 

This robot has a color sensor and this sensor is used for following lines. Additional Mindstorms EV3 sensors could be place on the robot, like a Gyro sensor or a second Color sensor.