ROBOTS AND PROGRAMS in Font

Creator Data Matrix ECC200 in Font ROBOTS AND PROGRAMS

a robot as having a face or a front and back, and that s fine. For SPOT (see Figure 1-1) his eyes are facing forward. His motors can rotate clockwise and counter-clockwise to move him around. When I m programming SPOT, I need to make certain that when he is told to move forward that his motors will rotate in such a way as to propel him in the direction he is facing. I ll get into this in more detail later in the book, but for now just understand that SPOT is easily confused. What I ve figured out is that SPOT really isn t the problem. I ve just discovered that when I tell SPOT to do things, I ve got to be very specific. Let s pretend for a moment that SPOT is good at is reading my handwriting. Let me give you another example of how specific I need to be when telling SPOT to execute a program, but this time, instead of telling him what to do, I simply take out a piece of paper and write down the following: SPOT, move forward 3 inches; turn left 90 degrees; move backward 2 inches; spin 360 degrees, and stop. Next, I give the piece of paper to SPOT, and he reads it. He moves forward 3 inches, turns left 90 degrees, moves backward 2 inches, spins 360 degrees, and, finally, stops. If your NXT robot is like mine, though, it probably doesn t have the ability to listen to voice commands or read a sheet of paper. If your robot can t hear you or read your handwriting, how exactly do you tell it what to do Easy! You re going to use programming software. There are other names such as programming suite or graphical programming environment, or blah, blah, blah for now, let s just use programming software, OK You re in luck. Your Mindstorms NXT robotics kit comes with programming software called NXT-G (the G is for Graphical, meaning programs are not written instructions such as my previous handwritten steps for SPOT).

Note There are a lot of ways to program. Just as different people speak different languages, robots (and

computers and other technical stuff) can speak different languages. Some examples of human languages are English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian. For your NXT robots, there are a variety of languages, too. I speak English, because that is the language I learned to speak in school. Your NXT Brick comes from the factory understanding one language: NXT-G. I also speak Spanish. But it s not my native language. Your NXT Brick can learn to speak other languages, too, but its native language is NXT-G. Most people won t learn another language until they understand their native language well. That s what you need to do learn NXT-G well so you can talk to your robot (by giving it a program).

NXT-G is the tool you will use to tell your robots what to do. NXT-G allows you to create programs that can be uploaded (installed) to your NXT robot. These programs can be instructions as simple as move forward 2 inches and stop or as advanced as you can imagine! NXT robots can be built with a variety of motors and sensors. But without a good program, your robot won t know what to do: Do I spin my motors What do I do with this Touch sensor Without programming, you ll have one confused robot on your hands. NXT-G is installed on a computer (there are Windows and Macintosh versions) and exists as software. I m not going to be covering the basics of using the software, so you ll need to refer to the