11/06/2010
#6 - NXTitzki – by Matthias Paul Scholz
NXTitzki is a basketball-playing robot that is named after Dirk Nowitzki, a famous German NBA player. It can be built with one single NXT 2.0 set.
NXTitzki can either be remotely controlled by a player or run autonomously, using the Ultrasonic sensor for obstacle detection and the feet-mounted color sensor for line detection (which allows for interesting navigation strategies and pitch setups).
When using more than one instance, nice matches and tournaments can be devised, so it might prove an attractive model for classroom activities also.
I (Matthias Paul Scholz) live in Southern Germany and am a member of the LEGO MINDSTORMS Community Partners Program, of the former LEGO's Mindstorms Developer Program and an official LEGO® NXTpert.
Moreover, I'm the administrator and editor of the German NXT blog "Die NXTe Ebene", one of the contributors to the world's most popular NXT blog "THE NXT STEP", author and co-author of diverse NXT-related books and engaged into different NXT-related Open Source software projects (see my web page at http://mynxt.matthiaspaulscholz.eu for details; you can find there many of my NXT robots also, including building instructions).
The idea to NXTitzki occurred to me when I was thinking about some contribution to the Fana'Briques 2009 LEGO event in France which featured the topic "Basketball".
Two remotely controlled prototypes of NXTitzki proved to be quite some success with the visitors there.
Here you can download (right click "save as"):
Building instructions
Movie (select 'Bonus Models')
Press the "Download" button to download the Program File (rbt).
by Matthias Paul Scholz
Germany June 2010