LEGO.com MINDSTORMS Meet the MDP's Matthias Paul Scholz

Matthias Paul Scholz
From:
Freiburg, utmost South of Germany (actually living IN the Black Forest)

What I do besides building with MINDSTORMS:
Mathematician, presently working as Software Architect concerned with Model Driven Architecture/Development

Why I signed up for the MDP:
(The reasonable answer,yet:) I want to help porting leJOS to the NXT, providing NXT users with a state-of-the-art development envorinment, in particular applying MDD concepts to it.
(The genuine answer,though:) I want to play :-)

Experience with MINDSTORMS:
Played with LEGO since me salad days, built some enhanced robots for my own pleasure and that of my cats, did some stuff concerning the leJOS Java API, wrote large parts of the online tutorial and am presently working at the leJOS 3.0 release.

NXT Project: Gastropoda robotica (The Slug)


The Slug	The Slug - Aft

Creeping Device	Tentacles

The Slug - LDraw	The Simple Program

About this NXT Project:
My NXT project the Gastropoda robotica (The Slug) . The idea for The Slug appeared to me when I read an article about a small slug-like robot the NASA had developed to send it up to walls or even ceilings.

Though my robot has no phlegm on its "foot" (I presume it could be done but haven't tried so far), it's nevertheless mimicking the molluscan "one-foot creeping" and capable of moving in any direction (no walls or ceilings, yet!).

The challenge (and fun) here has been to find a way to get a mobile NXT robot moving in other directions than fore-and-aft when its forward movement is propelled by one single motor only. My original thought on weight-shifting did not work in connection with "the foot" (though I tried a lot!), hence I performed some trick with a hidden propeller wheel.

This project has allowed me to learn a lot about strategies for building a rather complex and concurrently compact and solid NXT robot, alongside with gaining knowledge on different ways of redirecting the torsion of an NXT motor.Concentrating on the hardware aspects, I've kept the program very simple so far, enabling The Slug to creep and to dodge obstacles detected by the touch sensor only.

Future versions of the program may :

replace propeller wheel by a lateral moving front foot

integrate the light sensor to creep away from bright environments

use the sensors to "investigate" things The Slug encounters

My Links

More of my NXT Project Images

My Website

Watch the Slug in action

Watch the Slug avoiding an obstacle