Brickword

Brickworld 2011 has recently wrapped up in Chicago.

Shep won the 'Best Mechanical' build for his awesome Flexpicker.

You can read all about the flexpicker here, as well as all the fine details about how it was put together etc.

Theo Jansen inspired robot

Guest Post from Oschoe.  Not strictly an NXT robot, but as it uses PowerFunction motors and receivers it wouldn't be difficult to automate it!

I am fascinated with designing and building mechanisms that move, favorably without the use of wheels... I love stepping, folding, rotating, walking, jumping, flying and squirming mechanisms that move. This blog shows one of my tries in building a bot moving in an unorthodox way...

When I started actually building my designs I looked around for easily available, reusable components with sufficient technical components and controller possibilities and I ran into the LEGO Mindstorms series. After a few try-outs I started building simple multi-legs steppers with synchronized leg-movement. If you are interested; check my youtube channel

The design

A while ago I ran into the moving artwork by a Dutch artist named Theo Jansen, "het strandbeest". After re-watching the various (mostly lousy quality) movies on the web I decided to take the basics of the design and build my own version of a walking-bot.

The build

I started off with a very simple drawing of the legs and the motion required. After some trial and error with the ratio's of the legs I managed to get the basic movement just right. After collecting enough of the right pieces  I tried to build a 6legged version but getting that to run stable proved difficult. I decided to add two more legs and that made it run much more smooth. After a couple of runs of the 8-legged version it was obvious the legs did not have enough grip on the surface of the test area (my table :-)) I added 'feet'; the parts touching the surface are made of rubber and that did the trick.

For anyone interested in more building details ; check the 'stills' halfway the movie for hints.

Thermal sensor

Hi,
Dexter Industries have just released their latest sensor for the NXT, the Thermal Infrared Sensor.

From their webpage -

The Dexter Industries Thermal Infrared Sensor reads surface temperatures of objects. It is a non-contact thermometer based on the MLX90614. Detecting the infrared radiation from an object, the sensor can read object temperatures between -90°F and 700°F (-70°C and +380°C). The sensor has a high accuracy of 0.5°C and a resolution of 0.02°C. 
The Thermal Infrared Sensor reads both the ambient temperature (the temperature of the air around the sensor) and the surface temperature of the object that the sensor is pointed towards. 
The sensor can detect a flame at a range of 2 meters.

Xander has already done some cool things with his sensor.

How would you use this sensor?  Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.