Carnegie Mellon University Develops Multi-Robot for LEGO MINDSTORMS

The Robotics Academy at the Carnegie Mellon University has developed a new multi-robot for the LEGO MINDSTORMS system. The new system makes use of NXTBee, which is an X-bee- based radio system used by Lego Mindstorms manufactured by Dexter Industries.

The project gives a demonstration of the swarm robotics, which is a leading topic in robotic field coordinating numerous small robots to accomplish larger tasks.

Given below are some of the comments made by readers on the project. One of the readers considers the combination of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and ROBOTC as a powerful combination, which is capable of performing complex tasks such as PID auto-straightening, thermal imaging and even line tracking. Another reader commented that multi-robot communication was possible and had already been implemented using ROBOTC. The reader had recently attended training on the use of XBee wireless radio for establishing communication between multiple robots. One of the readers explained that NXT was capable of transmitting and receiving messages over a wireless network, with data in the form of strings. A few simple commands are added to the ROBOTC through the header file, XBeeTools.h. Multi-robot communication was considered an advanced topic by one of the readers, which can be looked into after mastering the programming for single robot communication.One of the readers discusses the video of the challenge given to the ROBOTC as part of the training. He explained that six NXT robots surround a single robot, which communicates its position to the rest of the robots.