Robots and Physical Computing

I recently received my Airblock drone from Makeblock funded through a kickstarter. If you want to see an Airblock in action this very funny video showing it being un-boxed from the Channel 5's Gadget Shown is worth a look.  Of course I had to play with it in Air mode, it is a drone I want to see it fly. But there options for creating hovercraft and your own designs. It is controllable via an app either by directly controlling or through Makeblock's own block based programming language Makeblock both are in the same app which is a feature I particularly liked. It can be annoying have to multiple apps for the same product. Selecting Air Mode (as below) means you can control it directly or chose New Project to program it. In a new project, in design mode you can set up the interface dragging buttons into the project and then write code to go behind them. I found I needed to add a power switch in the interface.   Click on the button and you can dr...

I have had an opportunity (ie, the time) to play with mBot, Scratch Programmable Robot using the mBlock software which appears to be a modified version of Scratch - so relatively easy to use. They have added a section of blocks, to the standard set, marked Robots containing blocks for both Arduino and mBot.  An earlier blog post ( mbots - graphical programming and Arduino ) discuss some of the basics of the robot.  Just for fun I wanted to play with the ultrasonic sensor, getting the robot to react, change direction (run away) and the 'face' on an LED matrix that came with the robot if there is an object in the way. The routine Loop Show a smiley face (using Port 4 ) If the ultrasonic detector senses something close (guessed at a setting of 10) Go backwards quickly Play a tone Show an upside-down smiley face  wait 1 sec Otherwise Move forward End the loop Download the code to the mBot using the Upload to Arduino button (see below). Here ...

Makeblock ( http://mblock.cc/mbot/ ) funded through Kickstarter the development of a new robot - mBot ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1818505613/mbot-49-educational-robot-for-each-kid ) with the subtitle "$49 educational robot for each kid". What they came up with is a interesting system that uses their mBlock software, which resembles Scratch but produces code for Arduino, to program a robot with LEDs, light sensors and buzzer integrated on the main board; but also comes with sensors for line-following, ultrasonic sensor and with the version in the kickstarter reward a 16x8 LED matrix. My impression so far it is really quite intuitive to work with, in the example above the robot: moves forward; displays 'f' on the LED matrix;  turns right; displays 'r' on the LED matrix; repeats until the on-board is pressed to stop the motors.  What I like most though is seeing the graphical code turned into Arduino code - the potential to see the same ...