Design and Implementation of 2-D Intelligent Remote-control LEGO Robot with Zigbee Sensor Nework

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高雄應用科技大學學報第 41 期民國 101 年 5 月 Journal of Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Vol. 41(2012)

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目錄

... Chung-Hong Lee Design and Implementation of 2-D Intelligent Remote-control LEGO Robot with ZigBee Sensor Network... ...Wen-Ping Chen, Shan-Chih Hsieh, Wei-Ting Lu, Song-Shyong Chen, and Luke K. Wang 93 以 ZigBee 感測技術設計 2-D 智慧遠端遙控樂高機器人... ... 陳文平、謝勝治、陸緯庭、陳松雄、王冠智鹿港鎮文化資產之遊憩效益評估...張梨梅、闕雅文 111 The Evaluation of Recreation Value of Culture Heritage in Lukang ... ... Li-Mei Chang, Ya-Wen Chiueh 多機變速變旋角風能發電系統在隨機風速下的動態分析... ... 鄭淵元、陳盟仁、吳有基、劉國才、陳泉合 135 Simulating Dynamic Behavior of Variable-Speed Pitch-Controlled Wind Energy Conversion Systems ... Y.-Y. Zheng, M.-J. Chen, Y.-C. Wu, K.-T. Liu, C.-H. Chen

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Wen-Ping Chen, Shan-Chih Hsieh, Wei-Ting Lu, Song-Shyong Chen, and Luke K. Wang Design and Implementation of 2-D Intelligent Remote-control LEGO Robot with ZigBee Sensor Network

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Design and Implementation of 2-D Intelligent Remote-control

LEGO Robot with ZigBee Sensor Network

Wen-Ping Chen1,*, Shan-Chih Hsieh1, Wei-Ting Lu1, Song-Shyong Chen2, and Luke K. Wang1

1_{Department of Electrical Engineering,}

National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan

2_{Department of Information Networking Technology,}

Hsiuping University of Science and Technology, Taichung 412, Taiwan *E-mail: pen@mail.ee.kuas.edu.tw

Abstract

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is a kind of scientific creative teaching aids of robotic system architecture combined with Lego Blocks and computer technology. It has a multi-institutional variability and programmable control capability, so it is very suitable for educational purpose and serving as a R&D platform. However, the function of intelligent remote control is limited to connection wire’s length and sensors being utilized, so this paper designs a wireless controller with touch sensor, accelerometer and gyroscope to intelligently control the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Robot. It can sense the user’s motion in two-dimension and then transmit sensor data through 802.15.4/ZigBee wireless transmission protocol to drive it. There are two different kinds of NXT robots, demonstrated in this paper; the purpose of this research is to inspire the students’ interesting and enhance their knowledge of robot field.

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1. Introduction

Global disasters have been happening frequently in recent years which included not only the natural ones but also the human negligence accidents. When these natural or man-made disasters occurred, how to help rescue crews efficiently and detect the status of the disaster areas is necessary, especially rescuing survivors from any instable disaster areas. This is an urgent, worthy research issue. Fortunately, with the development of wireless network technology and robot, various rescue robots appear sequentially [1-6]. The diversity of robots are gradually replacing or assisting the human in the entertainment, complex or hazardous work environment. Robot industry will become an important Hi-Tech industry in the near future, so the governments and companies over the world have been enthusiastically researching and developing it. Hence, how to suitably build a robot learning platform for the children is an important issue. The robot tech is an integrated technology; however, it is not easy to make students feel that learning robot science is fun and easy.

Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory and the Danish LEGO company in September 2005, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 [7], a scientific creative teaching of robotic system architecture, which combines the LEGO Bricks and computer, has a multi-institutional variability and programmable control, very suitable for education and R&D platform. It includes a

variety of LEGO bricks, sensors, servo motors and NXT host. Teacher only take some concepts of machine configuration and programming skill to inspire students; therefore, the students will design a variety of vivid and interesting NXT robot (Fig 1). Besides, [9-13] show that LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is a very suitable platform regardless of robotics, computer science, or other scientific fields.

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot modules can be assembled to a variety of different robots, but the length of cable is not long enough,; the buttons are not enough and other reasons may cause operational inconvenience for the designers. Besides, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT has been built with a Bluetooth transceiver [14], so designer can use computer or NXT host to remotely control NXT by Bluetooth wireless network. The distance of remote control and battery life are poor for Bluetooth communication, and the volume is lager with computer or NXT host to design the controller. Therefore, the objective of our study is that we attempt to design a wireless controller module. It provides a small size controller and easy way to assemble LEGO bricks for designing some interesting remote control robots. In addition, this study also proposes a popular concept adopted from Wii’s remote control device, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and detects movement in two dimensions to intelligently control NXT robot.

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－95－ (a) Humanoid Robot

(b) Excavator Robot

(c) Scorpion Robot

Fig 1. A variety of Robots by LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0

2. Research Background

In this chapter, the hardware and software of LEGO MONDSTROMS NXT, and ZigBee wireless Network are described as follows:

(1) The Hardware Architecture of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0

The basic LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot module includes the LEGO bricks, computer, and input/output devices. LEGO bricks contain a lot of bricks (as shown in Fig 2.(a) to Fig 2.(j)), such as plates, bricks, axles, pegs, belts, pulleys and so on. The Computer is the core of a programmable control unit ─ NXT as shown in Fig 2(k). The host NXT is equipped with the 32-bit ARM processor produced by the Atmel company and an 8-bit auxiliary processor; the display interface part has a 10064 pixel monochrome LCD screen; in addition to providing four buttons users are allowed to switch menus, select the program to run or do a simple button control and other activities. If user keeps communicating with the computer, he can use the USB 2.0 transmission interface, or Bluetooth wireless interface on NXT host to the link [14]. Besides, NXT's most powerful features is that it provides 4 input ports and output ports 3 groups, through which users can input and output interfaces to connect to a variety of sensors and 3 identical servo motors to enhance the functions of the robot.

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(a) Long Bricks (b)Plates

(c)Bricks (d) Axles

(e) Bushings (f) Pegs

(g) Connectors (h) Wheels

(i) Gears (j)Belts and Pulleys

(k) NXT Intelligent Brick and Input/Output Devices

Fig 2. The accessory of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT provides four sensors, they are, touch sensor, light sensor, sound sensor and ultrasonic sensor (as shown in Fig 2(k)),; the sensors on NXT host are used through the connector of RJ12. The information of sensors data can be obtained by using analog/digital converter (ADC) or I2C serial transmission interface. In the basic applications, touch sensors can be used to detect whether there are obstacles or hit the button as a switch to drive the robot to do the movements; light sensor can be used to measure the intensity of light in one direction. To distinguish the current brightness, sound sensor can be served as a small microphone to detect the intensity of the sound or record sound,; ultrasonic sensors can be used to detect the distance between the robot and obstacles, to avoid colliding with obstacles. Besides, there are companies developing a lot of sensors for the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT, such as

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well-known companies—mindsensors and HiTechnic [15-16]. They designed some sensors with multiple functions to support LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT module, such as color sensors, electronic compass, and infrared sensors etc. Through the installation of these sensors and linking with the NXT host to enhance the robot’s performance; however, there are four sensors that can be used at the same time with LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT due to the limit of port numbers in the NXT host.

The standard LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot module also contains three output ports to connect to the servo motors (as shown in Fig 2(k)). Users can also use the servo motors to connect RJ12 connectors with output of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT host and pulse width modulated (PWM) to drive the motor of the robot to do the movements. The motor in the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT also has encoders, so it will not only allow the motor to forward and reverse, but also control its angle of rotation with the number of laps. For the control of the motor rotation speed, user can control it within the range from o to 100.

(2) NXT Program Development Environment

Very simple programs can be created using the NXT Intelligent Brick itself. The standard programming software is NXT-G, which is included in the shipped package. Here, additional programming software for NXT are also available, some of which is listed below:

 NXT-G

LEGO and National Instruments (National Instruments, NI) [17] jointly developed a graphical programming language used to design LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot and integrate program development environment, which can follow users’ demand through the drag, pull, and put to add a variety of different functional blocks. In the basic LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot programming, you can directly use the several shared features in the block model to easily complete a program to direct the robot to move. For example, if user wants to drive with the servo motor connected to the NXT host, he can directly use the Move block, which allows users to choose which to make a motor movement, and sets the direction of rotation, rotation speed and other parameters. The measurements of sensors can be obtained in the various sub-block of the Wait Block to run the program judge. Display block can show images or text on the NXT display. Sound block can play sound on the NXT host,; in addition to Loop and Switch Blocks can be used for Loop and determine the style. A NXT program example by NXT-G is shown from Fig 3(a) to Fig 3(b). Here, a complete design loop example of NXT-G is illustrated as shown in Fig 3. (c). When the NXT host detects the event is triggered and the button of the touch sensor has been pressed by the user, the servo motor will rotate two seconds,; NXT screen displays a smiling face and sends out a

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