Is mindstorm powerfull enough for a path following robot?

[Teoman Naskali]

Hello,
I am working (just starting) on my thesis project which is the
construction of a path following robot, i was wondering if the lego
mindstorms are powerfull enough?

Or hould i use a remote controlled
car and a webcam instead.

Is it possible to control your lego robot with your computer(on
runtime),Robot sends images to pc which processes them and commands
the robot. I think the pc would be more powerfull for image
processing and maby some AI.

I am planning on using a linux operating system (maby a realtime
linux) on a p4 1.6 laptop. To build a path following robot.

Can anyone help me get started? Like how do i get the pics from the
webcam. Etc...

Thank you in advance for your precious time and effort.

A. Teoman Naskali

[Xanthra47]

Yep. One can do this pretty easily under Windows. I have done simple
telerobotics stuff with my mindstorms 'bot and my pIII 800 laptop. You may
have some work to do to get the LEGO(R) Camera to work under Linux, but
people have been, and are working on that.

Try doing a seacrh under news on lugnet.com

HTH,
-JSM
"Teoman Naskali" <teoman...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:86cb5c4a.03030...@posting.google.com...

[G.W. Lucas]

The Mindstorms processor (also known as the RCX brick) has plenty
of capability for what you are trying to do, but you will have
to move to one of the alternate software programming environments.
NQC (not quite C) is quite easy to use because it runs on top of
the standard Lego(TM) firmware... but has the disadvantage that
it is subject to the limits of the standard firmware, most notably
the limit of 32 variables. Another alternative is to use one of
the implementations which actually replace the firmware giving you
access to all the system resources (I believe, a full 16 K of memory).
This include BrickOS (in C/C++) and Lejos (in Java). BrickOS used
to be known as LegOS but they changed their name in response to
a (completely reasonable) request on the part of the Lego folks.

Links:

http://brickos.sourceforge.net
http://lejos.sourceforge.net
http://www.enteract.com/~dbaum/nqc

Also, a while back I wrote an article on dead reckoning, odometry,
and navigation which featured a Mindstorms robot. It's getting
a tad dated now, but may still be of some use to you

http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200108/using_a_pid.html

Gary

teoman...@yahoo.com (Teoman Naskali) wrote in message news:<86cb5c4a.03030...@posting.google.com>...

[Frnak McKenney]

> teoman...@yahoo.com (Teoman Naskali) wrote in message news:<86cb5c4a.03030...@posting.google.com>...
>> Hello,
>> I am working (just starting) on my thesis project which is the
>> construction of a path following robot, i was wondering if the lego
>> mindstorms are powerfull enough?

--snip--
On 4 Mar 2003 10:59:16 -0800, G.W. Lucas <gwl...@mindspring.com> wrote:
--snip--

> Links:
>
> http://brickos.sourceforge.net
> http://lejos.sourceforge.net
> http://www.enteract.com/~dbaum/nqc

--snip--
> http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200108/using_a_pid.html
--snip--

Here are a couple of other Lego robotic links you might want to look at:

EN10 ME: Prototyping Home Robots
http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/al/en10/manual/sensors.html

Boulette's Robotics page
http://www.restena.lu/convict/Jeunes/RoboticsIntro.htm

Enjoy...

Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney aatt mindspring ddoott com