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.

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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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 is a tutorial with 10 runs - 5 of them are slow and 5 of them are fast and we measure how accurate the robot is each time. How consistent is it? Can it arrive consistently on a specific location on the field without the use of the sensors? The quick answer is - No, it can not. But let's see it life

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.

In this video tutorial we use a LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot inventor robot and we do an experiment and a demonstration with it. We demonstrate what is the difference in the consistency and accuracy of the robot when we move slow and when we move fast. For FLL, WRO competitions there is always this balance between moving fast and moving slow.

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

This is a 10 out of 10 tutorial, demonstrating the consistency and reliability of the active attachment for switching the engine in this mission. We power is transferred through a system for gear wheels to a lever at the at. We take that the robot is already positioned.

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.

This video tutorials demonstrates an attachment that flips a mission model. The mission model is attached to the field but it contains a level. This level must be flipped from one side to the other. There is a switch. We use a pinless active attachment with gear wheels and you can see how this works in the tutorial. There is no use of sensors as we don't need them. The alignment and positioning is something we leave for the other tutorials.

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. 

This video tutorial demonstrates the consistency and reliability of the active attachment that pushes on the two mission models. The goal is to use both the attachment and the robot to push on the mission model and move the truck and the plane after the blue lines.

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)

In this video tutorial we push two of the mission models with a pinless active attachment with gears. The goal is to push the mission models after the blue lines. The attachment is interesting as it demonstrates a non-straightforward idea of how we can push on the mission models. We explain the Scratch program and how we use the motion sensors - you will learn how to turn with the motion sensor to a specific angle.

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

This is a 10 out of 10 video tutorial that demonstrates the consistency and reliability of the robot that accomplishes the Unlock Cargo Plane mission. The attachment is an active attachment with gear wheels. It has a single lever constructed from 2 beans and we use this attachment to push on the mission model.

In this video tutorial we demonstration how to release the cargo of a mission model. This mission model is an Airplane. We have to push a level down to release it. We use an active attachment with a gear wheel.

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. 

Continuing from the last tutorial, we demonstrate the consistency and reliability of the robot when we don't user sensors. The result is pretty obvious - the robot is NOT consistent and reliable. It just makes a lot of mistakes

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. 

This is the first video tutorial from our course on LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor programming. In this tutorial we will start with how do we move without sensors. We will demonstrate a simple program. Our hope with this tutorial is that you will see why moving without sensors is a bad approach.

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