LEGO Mindstorm Robot Inventor

Helllllllllllllllllo Charlie, this is my very first blog post and its  talking about the LEGO Mindstorm Robot Inventor robotics kit which is basically a LEGO for learning robotics.

          As probably many of us already know as a child, LEGOs are always a fun thing to do as you can build something using instructions, and then you can disassemble it and build a ton of other cool stuff. But sometimes maybe the static models can start (or not) to get boring, maybe you want something a little different, something more complex and maybe something that has functions, here is where the LEGO robots inventor comes in. It’s just like lego Technic (another more complex type of LEGO) but there are actual electronic parts that can make the robot do various actions.

          This LEGO set contains motors, sensors and an intelligent brick (also known as the “brain” of the robot).There are 4  motors given with the kit and they can be used for various things turning a wheel, spinning a fan, shooting stuff, etc … basically a lot of different things that depend on movement.

Next there are two external sensors that can help the robot learn about its surroundings and receive an input: an ultrasound sensor and a color sensor. The ultrasound sensor or the distance sensor can detect a distance by sending ultrasound waves (luckily we can’t here it or it would be very annoying) and counting the time it takes to come back, it can measure with the precision of  1 cm, this can be useful for a machine that maybe stops when it reaches a certain distance to a wall or another obstacle. Next, there is the color sensor which can detect nearly 17 000 000 colors, but it can also detect how reflective a surface is or what is the ambient light intensity (basically how dark or bright the room is).

         

[right: ultrasound sensor & left: color sensor]

And finally the main dish, the Inventor Hub (aka the brain). This little brick shaped block is where the magic happens, all the motors and sensors are controlled and powered by this little guy. It also contains a gyro sensor which is used to determine the direction and angle the robot is at and it’s useful for robots that maybe have to balance on ones or two wheels. After that, there is an accelerometer inside the hub which is basically used to mesure changes in the velocity of hub so it can detect taps on on three different sides. Then there are three buttons on it that can be programmed to do different actions when clicked. The brick also has a 5x5 pixel display (it looks cleaner than it sounds) that can make different facial expressions or show number, letters or anything you want it to show. And lastly, it can also emit a lot of predefined sounds or can play a recorded sound. There is an app that is available on laptop and mobiles to program the robot using a visual interface (a lot like Scratch).

              

This robot kit also includes a lot of pieces, and instructions to build almost 13 different robots, but you can also build your own machines which have their own cool features. Once you start getting better at the programming aspect, you can also try to program by typing complete lines of code by using Python (an even more advanced programming language).

[the 5 main robots of the kit, back left to back right: Gelo, MVP, Blast, Charlie and Tricky]

                     

I bought this myself during the vacations and found it was really a fun and interesting thing to do during free time but you also learn robotics and how to program while doing this activity and the best part is that you also don’t need any programming experience to use it as it is very simple, and there are tons of tutorials within the app to show how to program them. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments.