Triffid (Three-wheeled Lego Mindstorms robot with omniwheels)

<p>I'm not sure if you allow Lego robots on this site, but here she is anyway.<p>

<p>Since getting into Lego Mindstorms I've made and subsequently dismantled several Lego bots with wheels and tracks (can't afford to keep them all), but this one's interesting enough to keep and develop further.</p>

<p>I started off making her with my old NXT brick, but discovered when it came to programming her that a) NXT bricks can't do trigonometry, and b) they can't do much else in the way of interesting maths either. I'll continue programming it in LABview when NI finally get around to supporting the new(ish) EV3 brick.</p>

<p>Doing anything even slightly advanced in the simple graphical IDE that Lego provides free for kids to programme Mindstorms robots with is frustrating in the extreme. The programme ends up literally metres long and keeping control of the whole thing becomes impractical (at least if your memory is as bad as mine is post-encephalitis, and I hope for your sake it isn't).</p>

<p>So she bounces off the walls on her touch sensors atm where I don't have enough ultrasound or IR sensors to go round, and otherwise manages to scoot around the house all right, tormenting the dogs and amusing the husband (he's a tolerant man … so far).</p>

<p>I have an idea of making a sort of treasure hunt with coloured paper, hence the colour sensor on the underside. Not sure how practical that is … </p>