Separate the robot construction on body - body and attachments. Attachments should be small, light and most importantly for winning the competitions they should be pinless. In this category we group tutorials, courses and materials for different attachments that have proved to be useful.
This animation demonstrates a vertical lift attachment. This is an attachment that transfer a circular motion from the motors to a linear motion and is a very powerful concept. We demonstrate it with a LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor robot build from 51515 set. This is arguably one of the most complex attachments in this course.
This animated video tutorial demonstrate the use of a lift attachment to accomplish loops mission. It is a lift attachment with a circular motion
In this video tutorial we demonstrate an attachment that can accomplish Drop missions. A drop mission is when you have to move on the FIRST LEGO League field with the robot, reach a mission model, and drop a part in this mission model. First time we saw such missions I think was in FLL 2013. The attachment, the robot and the mission model could be build from a single LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set. The mechanism for dropping works by releasing a lever when the attachment is pushed against the mission model. Check them out.
This is a live video tutorial of an inertia triggered attachment build with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor. The attachment, the robot and the mission model are all built from a single 51515 set. The cool thing about inertia triggered attachments is that they are active and are activated without the use of any motors which means that you have the motors for the other missions at FIRST LEGO League competitions. In the tutorial we demonstrate and explain how such attachments works and how they could be used.
This animation demonstrate the use of an LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor attachment to lift a lever of a mission model. The mission model is the Power Switch mission model where you have to move the lever from one side of the mission model to another. The principle of the attachment is powerful and easy to implement for all kinds of missions.
This video tutorial had a different idea than what we recorded. We planned for a push/pull attachment as we've shown such attachments for LEGO Education SPIKE PRIME and LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3. However, the issues with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor set 51515 is that we could not figure out an easy way to build a push pull attachment that meets our criteria for an attachment. Because of this we made a slight modification on the idea and it is again push/pull attachment but not moving in a line but in a circle - circular movement.
In this video tutorial we look at Vertical Lift Attachments. The attachment, the root and the mission model are all build from LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set. We've found that vertical lift attachments that could lift missions models vertically could be quite useful for FIRST LEGO League competitions. This attachment is one of the more complex attachments and some say it has an "eye opening" mechanism as you can learn so much from it. It uses gear wheels and two levers connected to those gear wheels to lift a part vertically.
Throwing/Shooting is a common challenge in FIRST LEGO League competitions and in this robotics video tutorial we are demonstrating an attachment that you can use to throw/shoot a ball. There have been missions for throwing balls like in bawling, or like in soccer/football. The attachment that we use relies on the properties of the plastics used for the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set - it bends and it throws.
This is an animation of a quick pinless attachment that is placed below the robot and is used to deliver parts, like the Container Mission model, to different parts of the field. In the live video in the lesson we explain more about the principles, while here in the animation you can get a quick overview of how it works and you can try to follow the same principles for an exercise.
This animation demonstrates the use of a Grab Attachment build from LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor 51515 set. Many of the FIRST LEGO League missions could be accomplished by grabbing the mission model and the principles shown here is useful for mission models that look like a loop
In this video tutorial we demonstrate a robot attachment that could be used to lift loops and other objects. Almost every year there is a mission at FIRST LEGO League competitions that involve lifting and the principle is interesting. You can build the attachment, robot and mission model from a single LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set and learn a principle of building an attachment for lifting.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate the user of a quick 'pinless' attachment. As all pinless attachment it is not that they are completely pinless, but that they do not require the "click" of the pins that is often difficult to achieve in a quick pace environment as during FIRST LEGO League competition rounds.
It all started with the famous 2017 mission for flipping a manhole and it was one of our favorite missions ever. Here in this tutorial we demonstrate the same principle of flipping a part from one side to the other. Sounds interesting, yes it is, yes it is.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate how the robot could accomplish the Power Switch mission. Power Switch consists of a cube with a lever and the lever should be rotate to 180 degrees. This mission model was very close to a FIRST LEGO League 2012 competition mission which was called - Oven. The robot, the attachment adn the mission model are built form a single LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor 51515 set and with the tutorial you will learn how to use an active attachment with 2 gear wheels to complete such missions.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate a Grab attachment build from LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor 51515 set. The goal of the grab attachment is to accomplish the mission of bringing loops back to base without loosing or dropping them when returning. The principle of the grab attachment also demonstrates how to have a a locking mechanism. In this way there is not way to the loop to escape.
This short animation demonstrates a really useful principle for FIRST LEGO League competition and this is how to use the Inertia of the robot to trigger an attachment that will do the work for us. It is very useful as we don't have to use the motors of the robot and we can afford to use the motors for other things.
With this animation we demonstrate an example for a quick pinless attachment that could be used to collect loops. Loops is one of the most common missions at FIRST LEGO League competitions. We use the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor set to build the attachment, the mission model and the robot. They are all from the same attachment. In the live video in the same lesson we enter into more details about the attachment and we describe its idea
In this video tutorial we look at an active attachment that uses gear wheel and the attachment is general enough to be suitable for reuse. This means that a lot of different missions could be accomplished with the same attachment. The goal of the attachment is to transfer power to a lever through a system of axles and gear wheels. It is interesting that we change the orientation of the gear wheels.
On every FIRST LEGO League competition and generally robotics competitions with LEGO robots, we build attachments to accomplish missions and we must accomplish the missions in a limited amount of time. Most of the time we can not accomplish the missions with a single attachment and we have to change attachments. This is where building robot attachments that are easy to remove really makes sense. In this tutorial we discuss some of the things that should be considered in the building Easy to Detach modules and attachments
This video tutorial is about a detachable attachment. In various FIRST LEGO League competitions there are missions that could be accomplished with an attachment and when you accomplish the mission you must somehow leave the attachment along with the mission model. Probably as a support - most of the time it is as a support. But we've seen some pretty powerful concepts that include things like leaving a clock mechanism that will continue to work for 30 seconds accomplishing the mission.