Video tutorials

Here is Lintu. It is a marvelous LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Animal robot that looks like Kiwi, the famous New Zealand bird. It is quite rare to see a Kiwi bird in person. But fear not, we've prepare a robot that looks almost exactly like the original.

This is a 10 out of 10 video tutorial demonstrating the consistency and reliability of a configurable attachment. The attachment is designed to accomplish the FIRST LEGO League 2021-2022 Cargo Connect mission model called Sorting Center. The mission model has 3 cargo objects that could be placed in different way. The attachment is configurable and before the run we configure it for the specific way in which the mission model is set up before the start of the round

The M07. SPACE WALK EMERGENCY is one of the most interesting missions in FLL the we've even seen. This video tutorial demonstrates a mission run for Mission 07 Emergency Walk in FIRST LEGO League 2018-2019 Into Orbit robotics competition. The tutorial contains only the mission run on the field. We accomplish a single mission. 

In this video tutorial we demonstrate a configurable attachment that is used for accomplishing a FIRST LEGO League 2021-2022 Cargo Connect mission called Sorting Center. The mission model has three cargo objects that are placed on random. The attachment is configured before the run, based on the configuration of the cargo objects. The attachment is also very powerful as it aligns and auto-corrects for errors that the robot is making along with squaring the robot.

Here is Comet. It is a fast LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Car robot that looks like F1 Racing Car. We've especially designed it to be controlled with the remote control to make it extremelly easy to download the program and start playing with the robot. It also has the option to "press the pedal" (increase the speed) with just the remote control. Check it out.

This is a recording of a completely perfect, 10 out of 10 accomplishment of a two parts mission - Train tracks, from the FIRST LEGO League 2021-2022 Cargo Connect competition. Due to the proper use of motion and color/light sensors the robot is 100% consistent and reliable for a non trivial mission. Even when the robot makes a mistake, it auto-corrects and compensates for this mistake.

Here is Turtle - a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot that is designed to look like a sea turtle (may look clumsy but it's not). It has two sensors - ultrasonic and gyro, capable of following its course and navigating through anything. It can even get "angry", if you annoy it too much.

This tutorial explains the use for motion and light/color sensors to accomplish a complex missing split in three parts. It gets into details of how do we keep a straight line with the motion sensor, how do we follow a line with the color sensors and how do we transition between different parts of the program by aligning and detecting lines wit the sensor. The goal is to get to a reliable and consistent behavior of the robot. On top of that, it is configurable as we've left a few parameters that could be set to configure the behavior for specific robot, venue, lighting, battery level and wheels friction.

Using everything that we've learned about LEGO Education SPIKE Prime competition programming we arrive at the final boss mission - how do we consistently reach a mission model at the other end of the field. Consistently. Every time. We use line following, motion sensor, counting of lines and border alignment. All the different concepts that we've looked at separately are now implemented together.

"Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not work" - this is the most common case in FIRST LEGO League competitions. In this tutorial we demonstrate and discuss such a case where the first part of accomplishing the mission always works but the second part has about 60-70% success rate. The robot is not very consistent. Let's take a moment to see it and to explain why so that in the next lesson we can resolve this.

The bench mission was a video tutorial that we recorded several times. It was really hard to get it 10 out of 10. The reason was the shear complexity of the mission. There are three things that should happen in this mission at once which was extremely difficult. What you will see in the tutorial is how this attachment behaves

In this video tutorial we use the motion sensor and demonstrate 10 out of 10 times how we can keep the robot moving in a straight line. The program is describe in the previous tutorial in the lesson where we enter into the programming. Here we visualize how consistent and reliable the behavior of the robot is

In this tutorial we demonstrate how a Flip Mission could be accomplished with a Flip Attachment. The robot attachment could be adapted to other flips in FIRST LEGO League/World Robotics Olympiad and other robotics competitions. The principle is the same. The tutorial uses Luly, small LEGO Education SPIKE Prime competition robot with 3D building instructions as a robot base.

In this video tutorial we use the Unload Cargo Ship mission from FIRST LEGO League 2021 Cargo Connect robotics competition to demonstrate how we can program the robot to keep a straight line while moving. Do we need to for this mission? - probably not, but we do it either way as a way of demonstration with a fairly simple mission. The program uses the motion sensor to auto-correct the errors that the robot is making while moving

We've recently received a number of question on how could the SUV box robot be charged. The answer is simple - you detach the back pane. The question and topic of detaching modules from a robot and attaching them again is really interesting and powerfull and yet not very often implemented in many robots. 

What if the robot could make an mistake and still accomplish the mission? This is what we demonstrate with this tutorials - a few principles for error tolerance and self-correction. Even though we start the robot from a few different places we manage to complete the mission every time with the same program. We use the LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robot and we continue directly after the 10 out of 10 tutorial

As we are already off the season we decided to look back at the competition. First, we will take a look at the working solution for FIRST LEGO League 2017 Manhole Cover. This was generally accepted as one of the most difficult missions during the competition. We've built a single attachment to accomplish it. 

(we are releasing the video without explanations and will add the explanations later)

This is a 10 out of 10 tutorial for pushing gently on a mission model. We also discuss how to build robots that tolerate error and auto-correct their behavior.

The after season review continues. No. We are not publishing a single solution for the next season before it is over, but let's learn from the previous season. The current tutorial is about three missions at once on a single run with the robot. Most FIRST LEGO League teams try to accomplish one-two missions on a single run out of the base, and three is really what makes the difference

In this video tutorial we demonstrate how to gently push on an object to accomplish a mission. Gently means that we are pushing but not with force. If we push with force the mission model will fall and we will not accomplish the mission. We use LEGO Education SPIKE Prime and the Ultrasonic Sensor.

With this first tutorial on the Motion Sensor in the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor course we demonstrate the basic algorithm for moving in a straight line with the Motion Sensor. From here all the other algorithms are modifications, and if you know the basic it will be easier to tweak the behavior for your particular challenge

DIfferent wheels and tires will result in different behaviour of the robot. That is actually pretty common sense. The real question is what is the influence. Would the robot make smaller deviations if it has smaller wheels or it will make larger deviations? The tires could also be quite dirty or brand new. Or the wheels could be attached in different ways. 

This is a 10 runs tutorial that demonstrates how the accuracy of the robot improves when we use slow acceleration vs fast or default acceleration. Note that the improvement is small. This is not an accurate and consistent robot. No. This is a robot that is all but accurate or consistent. It does not use sensors and you should use sensors. But it is a teaching/demonstration moment for everybody to seen what is it that you can expect if you don't use sensors.

The LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set comes with two LARGE motors. But even though these motors look almost the same they are not quite the same. There are always some differences in their behaviour. If you have more than two motors, because you bought them or you won them somewhere at a competition, it is worth doing an experiment to find which pair of motors works best. 

In this video tutorial we are demonstrating the impact of slow and fast acceleration on the robot. In the Scratch program there is an acceleration block for fast and slow acceleration. The robot behaves in different way. Let's explore them so that you know what to use for FIRST LEGO League competitions.

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