LEGO.com MINDSTORMS Meet the MDP's James Floyd Kelly (Jim)

James Floyd Kelly (Jim)
From:
Atlanta, Georgia, USA

What I do besides building with MINDSTORMS:
I am a freelance writer. I help businesses create technical and business documentation. I also work as a technical editor for some technical book publishers AND I am currently writing a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT book for Apress Publishing.

Why I signed up for the MDP:
I have enjoyed playing with MINDSTORMS since my first purchase of version 1.5. I also had some ideas for books and web material that would encourage kids in the math and science areas, and I thought participating in the MDP program would be a great way to get a head start on developing some material that might be beneficial to teachers and parents of young MINDSTORMS developers.

Experience with MINDSTORMS:
I have 'played' with MINDSTORMS versions 1.5 and 2.0, including some of the alternate programming languages available. Since joining the MDP, I have developed a handful of robot designs, many of which will be included in my book.

NXT Project: Vine Crawler

About this NXT Project:
For the Vine Crawler I wanted to develop a NXT project that would fit with my book's design philosophy:

examine the problem
develop a solution
build the bot

and then program it .

The Vine Crawler is essentially one possible solution for the problem of crossing a large room via a "vine" (string) and filling a jar with dropped objects to trigger a lever. The problem has elements of a "Rube Goldberg" setup. I hope my younger readers enjoy the strange problems I pose in the book AND the robot solutions I teach them to build.

NXT Project: SnailBot

About this NXT Project:

The SnailBot was my first attempt at designing, building, and programming a NXT robot. I built it to test some different aspects of the motors and the Ultrasonic Sensor . I will create a similar version of this robot for my book.

My Links
My Blog TheNXTstep