VI Shots

NXT-G Online is software that allows you to program a virtual Lego Mindstorms NXT. Are you a school that doesn’t have enough cash for an NXT hardware set. No fear, this virtual software actually lets you program in NXT-G and download to a virtual NXT brain. Then you can execute the code and see it in virtual action.

To help better understand what is going on in the video, here is the sequence of chronologically events:

• A challenge was selected – a video that came up introduced the challenge.
• The simulated NXT-G programming environment was opened
• Wrote some code (4 motor blocks were dragged onto the palette, and each was set at a different power level).
• Downloaded the NXT-G program to the virtual NXT robot, which automatically opened the virtual environment.
• The robot was moved to where we wanted it to start.
• The virtual NXT brick was opened and we ran the program that was just created. The robot moved accordingly.

Note that the release version of NXT-G Online also has the ability select different sensors and motors for the virtual robot after which you can go back and change your code to make use of your modifications.

Source: The NXT STEP – LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Blog

Download VideoBraintech demonstrates Volts-IQ to VI Shots.

Braintech’s VOLTS-IQ Visual Intelligence Software Suite provides feature recognition, object localization and robot guidance in the form of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) services.

VOLTS-IQ uniquely combines Braintech’s proven robot vision expertise with Microsoft’s powerful MSRS service-based architecture. Using VOLTS-IQ, researchers, commercial product developers and hobbyists can “vision-enable” their robotic projects and products with unprecedented ease and speed, leap frogging the traditional barriers involved with vision development and bringing their ideas to life faster than ever.

Resources mentioned in this video:

• Volts-IQ
• Microsoft Robotics Studio
• Braintech
• Mindstorms NXT

National Instruments continuously works closely with Lego to expand virtual instrumentation into the classroom by developing LabVIEW integration with their Mindstorms NXT platform. In this latest VI Shots video we see a demo of an NI product acquired from Hyperception, the Speedy-33. We see how the Speedy-33 combined with a HiTechnic interface can integrate LabVIEW signal processing algorithms to move an NXT based on audio frequencies.

Resources mentioned in Video:

• Infinity Project
• NI Speedy-33
• HiTechnic
• LabVIEW
• Lego

Quicktime
Jay Kinzie is an avid Lego Mindstorms fan, he contributes to the NXT STEP blog and is a participant in FLL competitions. He is also a MINDSTORM Community Partner (MCP). Jay showed us some of his creations at NIWeek 2007 this past August.

Jay is also a freshman mechanical engineering student at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Jay caught the entrepreneurial spirit at 15 years old and has formed Jbotics Innovations LLC (www.jbotics.com) to leverage his ideas related to internal combustion engines and transmission designs. He currently is pursuing 41 patents on a variety of products. Some of his transmission designs are built into his Lego robots.

• Jay’s creations on the LOGO site.