There are few opportunities more exciting than some Lego NXT Mindstorm robot computer science programming and engineering. Our science club is fortunate to have a real engineer teaching us to design, build and program robots! Mr Nate Griffith deserves an award for his volunteer teaching efforts. We mix in a measure of robot computer science while we pursue our other science interests.
Lego NXT Mindstorm robots have sensors attached to the “brick” with cables. The official list of sensors includes rotation, light, ultrasound, touch and sound. There are two light sensors: black & white and color. Most sensors have adjustable thresholds that can be programmed to trigger some robot behavior when an event occurs. The computer program that runs in the robot’s “brain” is written with colorful “blocks” in the NXT software program on a computer.
First the computer programmer writes steps to command the robot in pseudocode, which is robot instruction in plain English. Then the computer programmer takes each step of pseudocode and translates that into line by line programming with modular code switches and variables included, eventually applying this method to robot programming code blocks strung together in the computer application.
When the programmer is satisfied that the robot will run according to programmed plan, the computer program is compiled and downloaded to the robot’s “brain” through a cable connected to the computer. The robot acknowledges a computer program is downloaded successfully. The robot operator then sele ts the computer program by name through the screen on the robot’s “brain” and the program is run on the robot.