Schedule spring 2012

End Course Project

On Thursday the 14-6-2012 the presentations of the end course projects take place in Zuse from 9:00 to late afternoon. Each group has 15 minutes for there presentation.

On Monday the 25-6-2012 the lab reports from the worksessions during the project are handed in together with a conclusion of the results obtained during the whole project. These hand in should be in printed form.

16-2-12

Acting and Actuators

Articles

• Ole Caprani, RCX Manual,
  RCX Output Ports and Actuators.
• NXT Output Ports, Hardware Developer Kit, page 5.
• leJOS Tutorial: Controlling the Motors
• Kinematics (Wikipedia).
• leJOS Tutorial: Controlling Wheeled Vehicles
• Thomas Hellstrom, Foreward Kinematics for the Khepera Robot

Further Reading

• John J. Smith, LEDs For Dummies, An overview of things that most engineers forget about LEDs.
• It seems that a lot of material on Mobile Robots steems from Gregory Dudec and Michael Jenkins, Computational Principles of Mobile Robots. The chapter on Locomotion can be seen on Google Books.

Lab Material

• NXT Programming, Lesson 3

9-2-12

Sensing and Sensors - Analog/Digital conversion.

• Ole Caprani, RCX Manual,
  RCX Input Ports and Sensors.
• NXT Input Ports, Hardware Developer Kit, page 6-8.

Further Reading

• Neil Storey, Electronics, A Systems Approach, Addison-Wesley, 1998, Chapter 13, Data Acquisition and Conversion.

  A copy will be available at the lecture.

• Tom Dean, Building Intelligent Robots, Sensors and Sensing, Ultrasonic Acoustic Sensing
• There are two RCX light sensors in the LEGO Lab: The active/passive LEGO sensor and a home build passive light sensitive resistor. A detailed investigation of the two sensors are available in Timo Dinnesen: Properties of two light sensors, Jan, 2006.

Lab Material

• NXT Programming, Lesson 2

Lecture 2-2-12

PID controllers and Embedded Java API

• PID Control.
  Chapter 5, pp. 179-190 of
  Fred G. Martin,
  Robotic Explorations: A Hands-on Introduction to Engineering,
  Prentice Hall, 2001.
• Rodger Glassey, Andy Shaw: Fun with Java Technology on LEGO Mindstorms, Java One, 2009.
• NXT LCD and Button.
• leJOS, Java API for LEGO Mindstorms NXT, especially the classes Battery, LCD and Button.

Further Reading

• Control System (Wikipedia).
• PID controller (Wikipedia).
• Vance J. VanDoren, Understanding PID Control.

Lab Material

• NXT Programming, Lesson 1
• Compilation and upload of Java programs for the NXT is described in the leJOS NXJ installation guide.
• As platform for your labnotes you can use blogger.com. Please use a template that makes it possible to print the blog. Go to http://eksempelnotesbog.blogspot.com/ to see an example labnote.

Lecture 26-1-12.

Introduction to embedded systems with digital control and the LEGO Mindstorms NXT

End course project example video.

Articles

• Simple Feedback Control.
  Chapter 5, pp. 174-182 of
  Fred G. Martin,
  Robotic Explorations: A Hands-on Introduction to Engineering,
  Prentice Hall, 2001.

  A copy will be available at the lecture.

Further Reading

• Embedded Systems (Wikipedia).
• leJOS, Java for LEGO Mindstorms.

Lab Material

• No lab session in the first week.

Lab Notebook

• In the lab sessions you will work in groups of 3. After each lab session the group should fill in a notebook. After the second lab session each group should sent an e-mail to legolab with the names of the group members. List of groups that have already done this. To perform the activities in the lab sessions each group need LEGO Mindstorms Material. The material can be borrowed during the course. At the first lecture material will be available for handout.