Cameron Hughes - Build Your Own Teams of Robots with LEGO Mindstorms NXT and Bluetooth

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The authors would like to dedicate this book to those who helped us, showed patience, and gave us inspiration:

To Barbara, who gave Bob his first LEGO set in 1974, and to Betsy, who graciously gave Bob the precious time and space to work on the material and to build that amazing cube solver.

To Lael, who loaned us Trevor and his expertise for far too many long hours.

To Takeo, whose 60th birthday celebration made the robot spark our priority.

To Mary Beulah, who during the project would always pronounce the word robots ro-buts, we will miss you.

To Vera Mae, who was the first to ignite Traceys passion for philosophy and science, you are missed.

Cameron Hughes is a professional software developer with more than 15 years of experience. He is a staff programmer/analyst at Youngstown State University and a software epistemologist for Ctest Laboratories. Tracey Hughes is a senior software and graphics programmer at Ctest Laboratories, where she develops information and epistemic visualization software. Both Cameron and Tracey are long-time robot enthusiasts with a collection of more than 100 robots. They have sponsored and participated in local robot competitions and robot programming workshops for the LEGO NXT and RS Media platforms through their local ACM chapter. Cameron and Tracey are the authors of seven books on software development, multithreaded programming, and parallel programming in C++.

Trevor Watkins is a network communications and system integrations specialist. He is currently the Technology Manager at the Wadsworth Public Library, where he designs, integrates, and administers all aspects of the librarys network and information systems. Trevor is also an adjunct professor in the Computer Science and Information Systems Department at Youngstown State University, where he teaches high-level programming languages and computer networks. He has been a robot hobbyist for over 20 years, with the past five years dedicated to MINDSTORMS NXT, Vex, and Arduino-based robot kits, and he consults with local high school robotics teams.

Bob Kramer is a full-time computer science professor at Youngstown State University. His research interests include using LEGO robotics as a tool to teach computer science concepts, as well as the development and extension of programming tools for LEGO robots. Bob has helped extend the nxtOSEK environment to enable C++ programs to execute on the NXT platform, and has developed an interface for a third-party sensor in the leJOS environment.

E ven though we may be able to get a robot to do many different things and perform different tasks, we will never be able to build a single robot that can perform every task or do everything imaginable. Even a general-purpose robot is limited by the number or types of sensors it has or by the types of end effectors it possesses. We may only have access to a stationary robot where a mobile robot is needed. It might be determined that a four-wheeled tractor has the required type of mobility, and as it turns out, the robot we have is bipedal or has been designed with only two wheels. But we cant go too far in the other direction either. Its not practical or possible to build a different robot for every task or for every scenario we require. First, building a robot requires time, and the parts are costly. Sensors can be expensive. We wouldnt want to build one robot to turn off the lights and a separate robot to turn on the lights. There would be a lot of unnecessary duplication. However, we could dismantle the robot we have to build the robot we need. We really dont like this option, though. After we have put in the time and effort to build a robot and test it, and it does what we want it to do, were usually happy, and we keep it.