Robots and Physical Computing

Up to this point the junk bot building has largely being about building a moving (or drawing) 'bot' moved by vibration - limited control, but fun.  A  Nuffield funded bursary studen t, Hayden Tetley,  has being working within staff from the University of Northampton on whether LEGO 8547: Mindstorms NXT 2.0: Robot or Raspberry Pi based solutions can be incorporated with the bot to add some control of the movement (still by vibration). Idea One  Is to add a LEGO NXT brick, to move a junkbot similar.The motor and broken propeller combination in the earlier junkbots is replaced with the NXT brick and LEGO motor. A good potential feature is it a self-contained unit with power and control together, as well as being potentially fairly simple to set-up. This is the focus of this post.  Here are some videos showing idea one in action using LEGO motors, brick and the software that comes with the LEGO 8547: Mindstorms NXT 2.0: Robot : For more information on how t...