Steve Robbins

For those looking to either use a custom application to monitor the robot state as it runs; or those looking to program the hub using a linux machine: I have just put up a new github repository of interest: https://github.com/smr99/lego-hub-tk I started with the spike tools (https://github.com/nutki/spike-tools, via https://github.com/sanjayseshan/spikeprime-tools) and then wrote a new communication layer that can use both USB and Bluetooth, with failover -- i.e. if you unplug from USB, it will automatically switch to Bluetooth. I added in a mechanism to continuously monitor the hub's sensors and devices, and the console output from a running program. It is a work-in-progress -- not all the hub messages are understood -- but useful enough. Let me know what you think!

I was not aware of those documents, so thank you! They are relatively high level, though; I was hoping for a bit more detail. Examples: entrance angle is specified but says "varies according to distance" -- varies how?; what is "Fast Distance sensing"? The output resolution is given (1mm) but what is known about the accuracy? Also, if the resolution is 1 mm, how come I only get integer output in cm? Fair point. At the moment, I am just exploring how far I can push the provided hardware. I have just coded up a routine that spins the robot and takes a measurement as fast as I can, storing into a list of 360 elements -- one distance measurement (the smallest, if multiple) for each degree of yaw. Then I segment the array by looking for discontinuities -- say a jump of > 5 cm in adjacent readings (all the objects in the scene are at least 10 cm apart). Each span of similar readings should be "one object". What's puzzling is that when I do consecutive runs without moving the robot in between, I may find 5 objects, or 4 or 3 or ... I was naively hoping that even with noise, at least the number of detections would be robust. I wonder if the scene complexity is a problem (echos?)? I was doing the experiments on my dining room floor, with a number of chair and table legs as the objects. Maybe I'll try a less cluttered area. I would think lidar -- being a distance measuring device -- would have similar limitations? Or do you get a distance map instead of a single distance? Oh, that camera addition looks very cool!! I was wondering how I could get a camera on board - this might be the way to go. Thank you!!

Hi, I'm wondering where to find additional details about the distance sensor provided in Mindstorms 51515. For example, I've just discovered that while it works well pointed squarely at a wall, as you pivot the sensor past 45 degrees, the distance reading suddenly jumps. I guess this is because there is no longer enough signal in the return echo. So then I started wondering if I am aiming towards a small tower (e.g. a 5cm by 5cm base), will I be able to detect it if coming towards its corner? Would a round structure be better? How big would it have to be? I would also guess that there is a cone field of view for these sensors -- so what is the cone angle? What is the behaviour if there are two objects in view? As background: I'm a robotics newbie, just dipping my toe into a Christmas present. My current interest is mobile robots, so I built a very simple driving base using the wheel design of "Tricky" but with the distance and colour sensors facing forwards. My goal is to have it drive around and locate targets by their colour. So I coded a simple "spin around and record all distance/angle pairs" to build an initial list of targets (I'm coding this all in Python). My floors are mainly medium shag carpet so the movement is not smooth and, as one might expect, this produces a lot of "noise" -- spurious objects that I filter out, but it also misses "obvious" objects too. Hence my questions above.