Lego robot

In this project, students built a robot made from Lego Mindstorms which was able to navigate through a "labyrinth" (black lines on a white background). Starting from an initial position, the robot had to traverse the labyrinth by following the lines and successively taking all branches of the path, until it found a small box built from Legos. This box had to be brought back to the starting position on the shortest path through the labyrinth, i.e. the robot had to remember which turns it took to get to the brick. In order to simplify things, the labyrinth was acyclic, so the robot could explore all paths without running into a loop.

The robot was programmed using our programming language Quartz, which was translated to C and then compiled for the Lego Mindstorms platform:

Our students decided in favor of a tracked vehicle design, with both sides being individually controllable. This enabled the robot to make turns on the spot, which was useful for scanning crossroads and making 90° turns.

Lego robot with part of the labyrinth visible.

The "arm" attached to the front of the robot would be in an upright position during exploration. When the touch sensors registered the box, this arm would be moved downwards to hold on to the box while the robot returned home.

Rear view.

Download source code.

For more information, please contact Adrian Willenbücher.