Lego soccer robot designs for nxt
The first thing we want our robot to do is to be able to stay inside the Soccer Field; click here. To stay on the Soccer field our Robot must avoid the Soccer field's white borders. How can we teach our robot to know when it sees white? The highest reading inside my Soccer field is 60, obtained in the "light green" part of the Soccer field. To be able to tell my Robot how to see the difference between the light green and white parts of the Soccer mat, I could use a value: However a light sensor reading greater than 63 would mean that the robot is outside the Soccer field, and that is a problem we must fix.
If your robot has the light sensor plugged in to a different socket, you will have to change this code. If a robot Soccer player that has gone lego soccer robot designs for nxt the edge of the green and black playing field into the white surround, the code above will cause the Robot to retreat backwards on to the Soccer field.
It works like this: The command above will tell lego soccer robot designs for nxt A and C start to go backwards, taking the Robot back towards the playing field. I have used power However a greater power could be used when testing is complete.
The circled loop above will allow motors A and C to continue running backwards sending the Robot backwards until the Robot is back in the Soccer field. The code above is quite sufficient to tell our Soccer Robot to go back to the mat. They will continue running after leaving the loop. This may confuse us when this code is inserted in to our Soccer program. It is important to test that this code works, before using it as part of a bigger Soccer program.
To do this we download this program into our Soccer Robot, and run it. When lego soccer robot designs for nxt on your Robot Soccer mat, the robot should do nothing if placed inside the playing field, but should retreat backwards if placed anywhere on the white border surrounding the Soccer playing field.
This video demonstrates this. If your robot goes backwards into the Soccer field when placed on white, and does nothing when placed in other parts of the Soccer fieldyour code snippet has been tested and proven reliable. It can now be used as part of a Soccer playing program. When everything is good, go on to the next step where we can find out how our Soccer Robot finds the ball! Soccer Tactics 1 - Stay on the Soccer Field! Which readings will we use to tell our robot that it has left the Soccer field?
How could we tell the Robot to fix this problem?? Let us look at the lego soccer robot designs for nxt code. If your robot does not behave this way, they are several possible reasons. Has the light changed? This could lego soccer robot designs for nxt the light sensor reading taken from the Soccer mat to be no longer relevant. Is your light sensor securely mounted on your robot?
The difference between the "white" reading of 65 and the "light green" reading of 60 is quite small. If the light sensor on your robot bounces up and down as your robot moves, the light readings will change. It the light readings change by more than 2 or 3, your Robot may be confused and not be able find the edge of the Soccer field.
It is important that the light sensors are firmly fixed on your robot and that they do not bounce up and down as your robot moves. Check your light sensor mounting. Have you understood the steps above? Carefully check each of the steps above to see if you have understood lego soccer robot designs for nxt code and that your program is similar to the code above.
By Steve Westfall and Dennis Malovich: Honours Computer Science Students. It is designed to get children excited about science and technology. Teams, comprised of up to ten children with at least one adult coach, compete in the challenge.
In the FLL, the challenge is comprised of programming an autonomous robot using the LEGO NXT robot set to score points on a themed playing surface and create an innovative solution to a problem as part of a research project.
These two elements - the Robot Game and Project - make up what they call their yearly Challenge. RoboCup is an international research and education initiative which is more advanced than the FLL.
It is an attempt to spawn AI and lego soccer robot designs for nxt robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined, as well as being used for project-oriented education.
RoboCup currently uses a soccer game as its primary domain. In order for a robot team to actually play a soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated including: RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots within lego soccer robot designs for nxt dynamic environment. In the past, all FLL competitions have involved the building and programming of one autonomous robot to achieve a mission.
To date, there have been no challenges that involve multi-agent teamwork co-ordination between robots to achieve a goal or complete a mission. Due to the Bluetooth capabilities of the Lego NXT, we began to think that this type of challenge could be an excellent addition to the FLL as a new challenge.
However, due to competition time constraints and available hardware, it first appeared that a challenge of this type may be better suited for either an older age group of contestants or as a new RoboCup segment. We found a wealth lego soccer robot designs for nxt information scattered across the internet that was extremely helpful in learning just what kind of capabilities we were dealing with. Once armed with this new understanding, we took a closer look at both the FFL and RoboCup competitions.
Although at first, we thought that the RoboCup competition may be a better fit for our project, once we learned more about the NXT, we realized that the RoboCup competition was a little too advanced for anything that we could put together with the resources we had over an eight month period.
Therefore, we took a closer look at the First Lego League. Our initial reservations about trying to create the first challenge for the FLL that involved multi-agent teamwork co-ordination between lego soccer robot designs for nxt to achieve a goal or complete a mission were centered on the age of FLL contestants, competition lego soccer robot designs for nxt restraints and available hardware.
Normally, teams comprised of up to ten children ages 9 to 14 with at least one adult coach, compete in the challenge and program one NXT. We had very lofty goals right from the outset of this project. Since we North Americans are more enamoured with the NFL style of American football as opposed to soccer, we decided that our challenge would be to create NFL style teams of NXT powered robots that would compete against lego soccer robot designs for nxt other.
Since developing Java based programs that use Bluetooth protocols is a little more than the average 9 to 14 year old is probably ready to handle, we needed to develop a core set of programs that could be easily adapted for the competition or our contestants would never meet the time constraints. In order to simplify things for the FLL, we created two remote PC interfaces that control each of the teams through the use of Bluetooth.
As a starting point, we added lego soccer robot designs for nxt plays for the Offensive team that can be run with the click of a button. Each NXT on the Offensive team has pre-programmed instructions to carry out depending on which play is being executed.
However, each remote interface can be expanded to include up to nine plays each. Our new challenge would ask the FFL contestants to program the actions of each robot for each play. This way, teams could work together to decide which NXT needs to perform which actions for each play and work towards a common goal of either scoring a touchdown or stopping the other team from scoring.
Through the use of our interfaces, contestants would not need to program any complicated Bluetooth protocols and they lego soccer robot designs for nxt still get to enjoy the fun of controlling a robot by remote control. Create workspace in eclipse and import source code.
Be sure to include all libraries. Build all 8 robots and download individual code to each robot. Insert bluetooth dongle and begin set-up for each robot. Begin with a flat surface. The field surface is best created using standard sized bristol board.
The length is 4 by 2. The border is 30cm and the bristol board color is blue. Connect the robots using bluetooth: Connect each individual robot by pressing the connect button. Once robots are connected, robots can be maneuvered using the control buttons on the interface.
Do this for the Defensive robots as well. Use the controls on the interface to set the robots in their start-up positions.
These positions can be seen in our lego soccer robot designs for nxt demonstrations. The Offense and Defense occupy one half of the field each. All plays begin from the main start-up position.
The ball must be placed underneath the Center before play can begin. The play buttons on the interfaces Offense, Defense should be pressed at the same time. A point is awarded when the Running Back with the ball in the claw successfully crosses the end line of the opposing team without going out of bounds. Regardless of whether a point was awarded, all plays begin from the main start-up position.
Teams can choose how many plays each team can run. The team with the most points wins. CSS template by gorotron.