Synopses & Reviews
This amply illustrated book is about building some of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous inventions with LEGO's breathtaking robot technology, the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT. In this book, you will revive such fascinating devices as the flying machine, the aerial screw, the revolving bridge, the double leaf spring catapult, and the armored car?five centuries after their creation by the great Renaissance engineer. Using some of the most advanced programming environments for the NXT, you will make robots that work, move, and respond the way Leonardo intended his original inventions to do 500 years ago.
By engineering the LEGO models contained in this, book you will not only become acquainted with the MINDSTORMS NXT technology, but also with strategies to build advanced robots with NXT and to program them using different state-of-the-art NXT programming languages such as NXT-G, NXC, RobotC, pbLua, and leJOS NXJ.
For all five robots, historical background information is provided. Detailed high-quality step-by-step building instructions, as well as an elaborate guide for each single program enable both the inexperienced LEGO user as well as the NXT aficionado to become acquainted with the art of producing marvelous NXT creations and make use of many sophisticated features of the NXT.
This book will unleash the creative powers that slumber in everyone and combine them with the pure joy of playing. But beware: you might be surprised by the stupendous results this combination is apt to spawn.
Synopsis
Robots have been a source of fascination to me since my childhood. That was during the time of the first Star Wars trilogy, with very humanlike robots appearing on the screen, such as C-3PO, who still reminds me of some friends of mine, and not so humanlike others, such as R2-D2 (who nev- theless also reminds me of some people I know). There were the books of Stanislaw Lem and Douglas Adams that discuss the philosophical questions related to the creation of artificial beings. Do androids dream of electric sheep? I still wonder. Yet all my attempts to build something similar on my own failed. The gizmos I d assembled from wood and plastic not only looked strangely different from the ones I had in mind, but also didn t do anything (besides fall apart frequently). The time was not ripe for building robots of your own, unless you had a degree in electronic engineering, high soldering capabilities, and a well-endowed bank account to acquire all the special electromechanical parts required."
Synopsis
This book is written for serious NXT programmers and covers the most popular programming environments available today. The book is abundantly illustrated and includes sample code and countless best practices strategies.
Synopsis
"Advanced NXT: The Da Vinci Inventions Book" complements Apress's successful line of Mindstorms books by providing advanced programming techniques in a rich historical context.