loog 003: building Charlie the robot

The next Robot we started to assemble was Charlie, a cute little fellow. He has smaller than "Blast", but uses its 4 motors for his leg and arm. So he can move each arm independently and the 2 motors for the wheel make it possible to move and steer around the room.

assembly

Of course, we had to disassemble the last robot to get all the parts for this one. remote4 control program was easy to write with scratch. One downside of this robot is the tiny wheel in front and back to stabilize the Charlie, which makes it impossible to go over small gaps like the edge of a carpet.

There is a lot left over parts from the set. You can turn it independently, it's linked to arm rotations. But their extras you can do, like building a little drum set.

 

The standard build only uses 4 motors.The extra instructions included adding the colour sensor and the distance sensor. It's placed on top of the head and on top of the front wheel, which breaks its nice esthetic. I will try to find a better placement for the extra sensor.

Charlie completed build

 Here is the scratch program top Charlie movable with a game-pad.

basic movement control by a Game-pad

For arm movement, I could not figure out to get it working with the shoulder R/L buttons in a satisfying way. I think it's time to shift over to Python programming. 

 

Charlie with Drum kit

 

Lego removed the autocomplete Python coding functions from the App, it was buggy and they are working on new version. Bummer! nether less I try stick with Python for the programming.