25/09/2009
#3 Manty - made by Laurens Valk.
The third bonus model is made by Laurens Valk, who is a young builder from the Netherlands. Laurens has a good and prominent track record with designing, building and programming robots, and also writing books about them! Laurens is contributor to the blog The NXT Step, and participated in book projects with the fellow bloggers, and will soon release his own book about LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots.
'As part of the Junior MINDSTORMS Developer Program (JMDP), I was given a parts list of the new MINDSTORMS set, late 2008, and started on building models with the elements I had available at the time.
The name for the robot came after designing it. It had six legs and a long neck, and the closest insect I could find was a Praying Mantis. And, because of its behavior (it's a shy robot), a logical name was Manty.
I hope you enjoy building and programming the robot. I have put a lot of effort into making it easy to follow the building steps, so you should not have much trouble assembling it. Play well!
Here you can download (right click "save as"):
Building instructions
Bio of Manty
Program (zip)
Video
Laurens Valk,
The Netherlands September 2009