MRDS: Creation of Norris

Using Micosoft Robotics Development Studio (MRDS) to control the Lego Mindstorms kit is relatively easy. Although, their lack of documentation as far as input/output parameters and available functions makes it quite frustrating for someone who does have programming experience. Here's the block diagram of the finished program:

Meet Norris

The final product for the eWeek competition was Norris, inspired by Chuck Norris. Actually it was inspired by Team 1902 Exploding Bacon (FIRST Robotics). The point of the competition is to drive around a 2 level course, collecting the most colored balls and returning them to your homebase before time, about 3 minutes, expires. A street sweeper method was employed with this design and the robot kept the balls in its carrage rather than dropping off the balls at homebase every so often.

Inaugral Post: Lego Mindstorms and Microsoft Robotic Studio

For a competition at work to celebrate eWeek (National Engineers Week), we were given Lego Mindstorm kits and a task to design robots in order to navigate a course and collect objects. I thought this would be a great opportunity to test out Microsoft's Robotic Studio. It's a free application geared towards robotic development and simulation. It has built in support of various popular robots, including the Mindstorm kit. Also, it has a function for the Xbox controller.

My mechanical skills are lacking but the point of this is the software side. I took much inspiration from the building instructions on Lego's website for the Tribot, although, I didn't quite have all the pieces to build it, so some mods were required.

 
Unfortunately, the documentation from Microsoft is lacking and requires a lot patience and trial and error to determine what parameters are necessary. Hopefully, someone can skip the agony and learn something from my code. I'll post that in the next post.


I shot video of this landmark. The left thumbstick y-axis is used to control the left wheel and the right thumbstick for the right wheel:

The ending may be a fail but that's my lack of driving skills.