The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots

iii The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Jonathan B. Knudsen O’REILLY Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Paris • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo iv The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots by Jonathan B. Knudsen Copyright: © 1999 O`Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O`Reilly & Associates, Inc., 101 Morris Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472. Editor: Mike Loukides Production Editor: Nicole Arigo Printing History: October 1999: First Edition. This book is published solely by O`Reilly & Associates, Inc., and its purpose is to enable you to creatively program LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ brand robots. This book is not sponsored by The LEGO® Group. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O`Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O`Reilly & Associates, Inc. The association of the image of a mechanical toy rabbit with the topic of LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ robots is a trademark of O`Reilly & Associates, Inc. LEGO® is a registered trademark of The LEGO® Group. MINDSTORMS™ and Robotics Invention System™ are trademarks of The LEGO® Group. All other trademarks, service marks, and the like are the property of their owners. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O`Reilly & Associates, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. ISBN: 1-56592-692-7 [12/99] [M] vii Table of Contents Preface xi 1. Welcome to MINDSTORMS 1 What Is a Robot? 2 Mobile Robots 2 What Is MINDSTORMS? 6 What Now? 11 Online Resources 11 2. Hank, the Bumper Tank 14 About the Building Instructions 14 Building Instructions 16 A Simple Program 25 Wheels 27 Bumpers and Feelers 31 Gears 31 Multitasking 36 Online Resources 37 3. Trusty, a Line Follower 39 Building Instructions 40 Some Tricky Programming 44 The Light Sensor 48 Idler Wheels 50 Using Two Light Sensors 50 Online Resources 52 4. Not Quite C 53 A Quick Start 54 RCX Software Architecture 55 NQC Overview 58 Trusty Revisited 77 Online Resources 81 viii 5. Minerva, a Robot with an Arm 82 Building Instructions 83 Programming 103 Directional Transmission 107 Pulleys 109 Mechanical Design 110 Two Sensors, One Input 112 Where Am I? 113 Online Resources 115 6. pbFORTH 116 Replacement Firmware 116 pbFORTH Overview 117 About Forth 121 pbFORTH Words 126 An Expensive Thermometer 137 Minerva Revisited 138 Debugging 142 Online Resources 143 7. A Remote Control for Minerva 145 Two Heads Are Better Than One 145 The Allure of Telerobotics 146 Building Instructions 147 Programming the Remote Control 151 Programming Minerva 154 Online Resources 157 8. Using Spirit.ocx with Visual Basic 159 You May Already Have Visual Basic 159 About Spirit.ocx 160 Calling Spirit.ocx Functions 161 Immediate and Delayed Gratification 163 Programs, Tasks, and Subroutines 164 Tips 165 Retrieving the Datalog 168 Online Resources 171 ... - tailieumienphi.vn