Video tutorials -

• Box Robots

Should the robot be with a Front Wheel Drive or a Rear Wheel Drive to make it more precise? The answer is - front wheel will probably give you better results, but the wheel drive is not the most important thing. In this video tutorial on the LEGO Mindstorms Robots, we will do a few experiments to discuss the influence of the wheel drive on the precision of the movement.  

The balance of the construction of the robot has a great influence on how it will move. This is especially true if you would like to move in a straight line. If the robot is slightly heavier on the right it will move to the right. Here we have two robots - a Five Minute robot and a Box Robot and we will discuss the differences in the constructions and why the box robot is much better than the Five Minute even though it is using the same parts. 

There are a few main challenges with box robots and in the following tutorial we would like to resolve them. Read on and let's see how we could do this. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Second active pinless attachment for the robot construction. It is placed in the top/right corner of the robot and includes an interesting gear system for transferring the power. The attachment is suitable for complete rotations.

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. 

Recap on the attachments, their purpose and how you should use them. 

This one is very special- an attachment that could lock itself on purpose while working. 

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. 

In this Episode, we create the next attachment for the box robot two. It is again a pinless attachment, attached to the frame that transfers the motion to a vertical axle. 

The first part of making the robot move straight is to keep it oriented straight. While it moves it could make an error and turn slightly to the right and then the program should turn in back to the left to make its orientation straight. In this video tutorial, we would discuss how to implement a program to keep the robot orientation straight even when we are pushing or pulling it to either side and in the same time it has different wheels.

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.

Try to build the attachment following the instructions. Use it to actually solve a mission from any competition (like taking loops)

This video is part of a series where we show you how our Box Robot accomplished the M08 Elevator mission with 100% accuracy. The idea is that the robot pushes with enought force in the right spot, which makes the elevator turn over. The interesting thing is that the Dominator robot moves the lever after it pushes the elevator. This makes the move back possible, because the lever is now not in the way of the mission model.

In this tutorial we will use Whakatae - LEGO Education SPIKE Prime Box robot to complete a mission run from the FIRST LEGO League 2019-2020 competition for the M08 Elevator mission. We accomplish 10 out of 10 in this mission. A similar approach is demonstrated with LEGO Mindstorms EV3 at FLL 2019: Accomplish every time. M08 Elevator. 10 out of 10 successful runs

Don't limit yourself to the box and think of different ways to lift the robot. 

Note for the teacher on how to organize the class to use different robot base constructions to accomplish the mission for lifting.

In this tutorial we accomplish the Elevated places with the Whakatae - LEGO Education SPIKE Prime Competition Box robot mission. It is important to be able to go over the mission model and at the end with a simple mechanism we just push the mission model at the end