Raspberry Pi Lego Robot - Computerphile

[@imfrommanndame]

Does this guy make dinner, or does he hack it together?

[@osemudiame123]

ah yeah he does like that word quite allot hahahaha

[@101Jman]

+osemudiame123 kinda naive, if you ask me.

[@Yakoable]

+imfrommanndame Essentially he hacks it, a bit naive though.

[@osemudiame123]

+GarethPW with allot of skill

[@ricardoamendoeira3800]

This is very low quality content for this channel. The robot is too simple and can be seen crashing into stuff constantly in the video, even the PC case, which he should detect. We also barely learn anything from watching it.

[@supyoist]

Yeah, definitely more of just a proof of concept than what they usually post

[@longalexislong]

+Ricardo Amendoeira I built one of these on my undergraduate course that works far better than this one simply by using infra red leds and ldrs

[@longalexislong]

+Alex Jones In fairnesss it doesn't use a raspberry pi and lego so I lose nerd cred for that

[@Exaskryz]

+Ricardo Amendoeira Agreed. This is more of a Computerphile2 video, if such a channel existed like Numberphile2 does. But even that is questionable.

[@bdecker4045]

"due to some difficulties with the network it's currently not working" - most common phrase in tech support

[@sundhaug92]

+B Decker "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

[@bdecker4045]

sundhaug92

[@sundhaug92]

***** Works for most systems

[@joewell6435]

the standard OS for the RPi is not NOOBS, NOOBS just installs an OS.

[@NahrAlma]

+Joe Well
the standart OS would be Raspian, just for clarification.

[@joewell6435]

Holzkohlen yeah, I forgot to mention that.

[@felixrosen738]

+Joe Well So what exactly is NOOBS then? Simply an installer?

[@joewell6435]

Felix Rosén yes

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

Soooo... a really shitty Roomba?

[@caseythimm5522]

+MrC0MPUT3R Minus the vacuum part.

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

Casey Thimm Or the avoiding walls part

[@hoopshank]

+MrC0MPUT3R Probably couldn't carry a cat in a shark costume around either.

[@mika2666]

someone will do that eventually if you give enough people that idea :P
lego cat robot incoming :P

[@Nilguiri]

Air Canada want their money back.

[@andrewjc13]

I am disappointed by this.
1. Lego Mindstorms are *very* hackable, so while the infrared thing is neat I guess, there's so much potential for more here.
2. NOOBS isn't an operating system, it installs an operating system. The default OS for a RPi is Rasbian. This is pretty common knowledge.
3. "The sensors themselves have a range of about 4 meters, which means the robot can drive in an area of about 4 meters." When using ultrasonic rangefinders such as these the common practice is to assume that if a sensor doesn't detect something in its range, there's nothing there. In other words, the robot should be able to drive around a room of any arbitrarily large size, which, based on the intro to the video, seemed to be the point.
4. Lego Mindstorms have ultrasonic sensors and four sensor ports! You could do this entire project without a raspberry pi at all!
I've come to expect quality from this channel, and I don't believe this video met that level of quality. It's a poor hack explained by someone who doesn't really understand it.

[@Wargon2013]

+Andrew Combs I agree but maybe the point was to use a Raspberry Pi to control a (lego) robot. With the NXT unit, a different robot setup (better steering) and only a few lines of code this would work much better but the idea to use the infrared remote control and a LED is nice. Also using Lego sensors without the rest of the Lego hardware is probably more difficult.

[@PooperScooperTrooper]

+Andrew Combs I agree using the existing lego sensors might make more sense to do this exact project but combining the raspberry pi opens up a very different world. I see it more of a proof-of-concept, get something working and build from there.

[@Bastacat]

I am not exactly sure how is this video-worthy. :/

[@MoouuS]

+Kronguard +1

[@user-iu1xg6jv6e]

+Kronguard It teaches you: nothing's perfect!

[@thomassola6448]

I agree

[@slendy9600]

its a lego robot... youre argument is invalid

[@Bastacat]

ɐɯɹɐʞ ɐıuɐɯ Judging by most of the videos,while yes it is an educational channel,it usually shows and explains things about mid-range++ tech/computer science. This video shows a poorly made,below basic robotish...sort of thing. there are vacuum cleaners from late 90s that were able to perform better,it's not an achievement,it's nothing mindblowing or interesting in any way,its a basic bare bones display of sensors and how they should not be used.

[@TyTang24]

he keeps saying "hacked" and "naive". that aside, this robot doesn't look like it's doing what it's supposed to do at all. it looks like it's constantly running into things or hesitant to move at all. as people before me have mentioned, some of the stuff he says is just wrong.

[@DaveScottAggie]

I thought it was cool using the Pi to send an infrared signal to the stock receiver provided by Lego.

[@ButzPunk]

What's up with all the hate here? Maybe I don't know very much about robots, but I thought it was a pretty interesting little snippet.

[@AkshayAradhya]

+Ben Rowe This channel is kinda catered for computer and programming enthusiasts. And the robot wasnt even working properly. And plus its really simple, I dont mean to undermine the efforts, it looks complex and all, but its just using 4 distance sensors

[@overlordsweg8399]

+Akshay Aradhya Most of the stuff on this channel is simple, I can't recall one video which involves anything that takes real thinking to implement or come up with.

[@ghelyar]

+Ben Rowe It's not the most informative video on the channel, but I agree that it doesn't deserve all the hate.

[@carlomeronii]

I made a similar robot with 70$ with arduino and 1 ultrasonic sensor that can avoid obstacles way better than this one.
I can't see the point of this video...

[@rafaelgpontes]

+Carlo Meroni Same here... I also made one such robot with an Arduino and extra features other than this one offers...

[@RealBenAnderson]

Literally all of this can be done with standard Lego Mindstorms sensors and controllers, so why did you need to use a Raspberry Pi?

[@404namemissing6]

Lego and computers, my 2 favorite things.

[@Willybaster]

After having spent an entire Bachelor thesis constructing a robot using ultrasonic rangefinders and cameras I've realized one thing, and that is that the ultrasonic rangefinders are not reliable and produce all kinds of garbage signals in less than ideal conditions. A range of 4 meters is asking way too much out of these sensors, regardless of what their rating is. Getting reliable readings at 1 meter can be challenging enough sometimes. The problem is most often that the signals bounce off objects at an angle and don't make it back to the receiver. This problem gets exponentially worse when increasing the distance to the object due to simple trigonometry.

[@UltimatePwnageNL]

I wish i got a respectable room in a nice building to play around with lego and raspi's like this. Instead i'd have to build this with a group of 6 people in a classroom with 5 other groups and a deadline of 2 weeks 3 hours/week at most. Then this product would yield a 5/10. Barely.

[@tamasgal_com]

+Hatagashira but you don't have to put an Air Canada sticker on it ; )

[@ibmicroapple9142]

Why not just use an arduino?

[@TheJaydotdizzle]

+IBMicroapple A Raspberry Pi is more powerful than an Arduino! :)

[@maxff123]

+Jonathan D the polling of 4 sensors and a small bit of thinking is very simple, ideal for an arduino

[@TheJaydotdizzle]

Oh indeed, the arduino could probably just about handle this :) But I know the person that developed this and the network control and stuff that was intended is cheaper and easier on a raspberry Pi too! Also the robot was also capable of taking photos at one point I believe, and for that a pi is definitely more practical!

[@kazimierz198]

I'm not sure about the newer versions but the original Lego mind storm used an Atmel AVR which is the same type of microcontroller used in Aurdinos.

[@Eletronicafg]

+kazimierz198 The NXT 1.0 used an ARM7 as the main microcontroller. It also had an AVR, but its only function was to interface with the sensors and motors.
Today the last Lego Mindstorms is the EV3, it uses an ARM9 full fledged processor and runs Linux.

[@iAmTheSquidThing]

This seems like a very convoluted way of interfacing a Raspberry Pi with Lego motors.

[@vito6140]

Would love to see a part list and schematics :) I have this very same lego set and it's not actually a mind storm it's the Technic Lego 4x4 Crawler.

[@AkshayAradhya]

@Computerphile The reason the robot was crashing is because the Ultrasonic sound waves were bouncing away from the sensor's detector. You might be better off using IR sensors.

[@bartz0rt928]

You can widen the angle of those ultrasonic sensors by cutting down the 'cans' around them.

[@onumetru9900]

You dont need an Arduino to make a program like that. The Mindstorm Robot is able to do this on its one. (NXC is quite a good programming language for cases like this)

[@miki_cz]

Wait, do I get it right, that the raspberry pi is connected to an infrared LED that sends commands to the receiver the robot originally had?

[@R9000]

Would it not be easier to interface the motors directly with the RPi, or even use your own motors? Just seems like a bit of a pointless link in the chain to me. I can appreciate the ingenuity of getting a hybrid system like this to work, though.

[@guillaumecaruso9970]

"LEGO is for kids"
Yeah, right

[@bengrant2698]

I don't think that that is the LEGO Mindstorms, it looks like LEGO power functions to me. But altogether still very cool.

[@lowfreq78]

Nice job and cool robot.
I wonder if it's possible to spin the ultrasonic sensor and get a 360° picture.

[@jaagup]

+lowfreq78 yea, but it is basically only on one plane. I did it once, and wrote app for android to see the points. was intresting.

[@lowfreq78]

+JaagupKu
Nice :)

[@R9000]

+lowfreq78 +JaagupKu Yeah you'd be looking at a sort-of-accurate planar depth map. Not really anything like a photo. You have to take into account the range for these sensors too, which has an upper and lower limit.

[@Nsmitty1]

You can mount the sonic sensors on top of servos for a wider scan area.

[@Faxter313]

I am a bit reluctant to say this, but I might have built a slightly better working autonomous (not anymore RC-) car out of less valuable equipment: An AT-MEGA 32bit µProcessor and 3 infrared-sensors and then programmed that in C.
That Raspberry Pi seems a bit overkill to me for that task. Of course, doing it that way leaves with a lot more headroom for improvements.

[@deXXXXter2]

Watch out, some lonely, frustrated nerds complaining in comment section!

[@TheMrFlightless]

No part of that is Mindstorms, it is Lego power functions being remotely (infrared) controlled by a Raspberry Pi.

[@TheRealDrWho]

No extra? Could be interesting to see the assembly, electronics and the simple program explained. How long did he get to make his robot and was he alone on a team effort?

[@MeshFrequency]

Why did the robot had Air Canada sticker on it? As someone from Canada this tickled my curiosity.

[@trabitboy2276]

simulating infrared remote : great idea !
where did you find the protocol?

[@egg82]

does your program REALLY need root? Also, looks like Raspbian to me.

[@MedEighty]

I don't know why. But watching this has made me want to fly Air Canada.

[@El_Guapo74]

So this is a poor man's Roomba?

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

He looks lovely!

[@woofer2121]

couldn't you set the sensors further apart to get a wider "stereo" view?

[@Wargon2013]

+Edward Grindstaff
There are only 4 Sensores on the Robot, one on each side so they would have to add more sensors to do that. I don't know how exactly they get the information from the sensors but a normal NTX has only 4 inputs. It is possible to have more sensors as far as I know but I it is probably a bit more difficult.
Also a setup like this should be enough to avoid large objects. It could be the communication with the Raspberry Pi that causes the problems here. The most basic program that lets a NTX drive around and avoid objects is only about 10 lines long but only works with the NXT unit and certain commands from the NXC language.

[@itsshowtime4451]

How do you start with Raspberry Pi? It seems really cool. I'm 12 years old and I'm a programer (I know Java, Javascript, and Lua, but will be learning much more languages) and I'm starting to really get interested in programming and engineering different kinds of robots and stuff like that.

[@ImA4RONxD]

2:08 I'm not sure that's what hacking means lol x'D

[@musicinyouandme]

+I'm A4RON I actually believe that what he said was true. Hacking is just modifying something beyond it's original purpose. This is not to say that there aren't many other flaws in this video

[@bacawaka2813]

I did something similar as a freshman in college. I even had the exact same LEGO crawler. The problem with the crawler is that it was too wide and the turning radius sucked. So I ended up making a track bot instead with a LEGO excavator.

[@philadams9254]

How many times does he say "essentially"?

[@crissd8283]

I think you need a little more work on that. Why not use an Arduino or other micro-controller for this?

[@beucan9200]

3:52 if range of sensors is 4 meters, area in which he can drive in is 4meters squared ??!?
1) there is no limit to size of playground
2) it can only sense in area of 64 meters squared around him.

[@SuperMarvin5000]

The worst lego robot i have ever seen... Why does this video exist?

[@rachelf6745]

if every porkchop were perfect

[@jakebytes602]

Man, that arm processor can avoid obstacles almost better than my 8-bit arduino microcontroller

[@Reverso97]

If you're complaining in the comments about free content, why don't YOU build a better robot.

[@saloniburad181]

which software did you use to connect pi with lego ev3?

[@Robert-qo1qu]

Does this robot have any purpose? Driving around a room without crashing isn't all that impressive.
And if this really is all it does: Is the Raspberry Pi really necessary? Wouldn't the original mindstorms-hardware be sufficient?

[@hanniffydinn6019]

Lego should create a rasperberry pi module etc....

[@hotzenwelder]

Does this also function with SCRATCH on the Pi?

[@wisteela]

Very cool. I also spot a Zip drive in that old PC.

[@PooperScooperTrooper]

I don't understand the hate either, I thought it was pretty cool.

[@zlotnleo]

Ever heard of NXT?

[@Hendlton]

Could the rover be programmed to map the environment and remember where obstacles are and maybe also have a coordinate system so you can give it a command to send it to a specific spot on its map.

[@jakejakeboom]

yes, it's called simultaneous location and mapping. Definitely not super easy to implement from scratch.

[@GtaRockt]

+Hendlton yeah that's basically how those fancy vacuum cleaner robots work (the expensive ones! - the cheap ones just crash into stuff and then drive another direction)

[@BaldInIhremKino]

+Hendlton
to do that the robot would ideally need wheel encoders, so that it knows how far it has driven (but even that isn't perfect if the wheels slip)

[@TH0M4SGT]

Air Canada?

[@egixitchiford]

Under 301 club, how tough are you?

[@quranalone5824]

What if they bought sencors with a bigger range?

[@leedaniel2002]

I remember making a Lego mind storm robot in the 5th grade in class. I'm in 8th now so it wasn't too long ago but it was a lot of fun

[@Eragon954]

Recently i was buildind a line following robot, and it had one of those ultrasonic sensors, but after using it for about 10 seconds it simply stopped working, we tried to put a delay of half a second between the scans it dit but the problem was only delayed. Does someone had the same problem or know how to fix it?

[@larsiparsii]

He looks like an angel! :O

[@SylvainMenard]

Air Canada???

[@explosiveegg3920]

This guy looks just like Michael Pitt.

nice robot i love rpi's and also maybe if you all stopped drinking crappy dieT coke the aspartame wouldnt prevent the network from working :)

[@VexillariusMusicEDM]

Can this literally be my job? Like can I just build stuff with other people and goof around XD

[@lineriderman7]

This is a pretty bad robot if I'm honest. I've made a similar one using only standard Mindstorm parts that worked better. The only interesting thing about this is that you're controlling it with the Raspberry Pi, and that was barely even discussed.

[@myperspective5091]

I was trying to understand the process.
You robot can run autonomously but can interrupt that process and run it remotely . Can you also switch the sensitivity on the sensors?

[@calfischer1149]

yes, I'd think so

[@myperspective5091]

The reason I ask is that I am trying to design a Robot that has a Virtual Pet style brain so it can switch task. I can make both a Virtual pet and a basic autonomous robot with simple programs like Scratch on an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, but I can't add them together. That inferred interface system could be an interesting opinion.
Do you do anything with Open cv? 

[@myperspective5091]

Robert Swift
Cool bot by the way .

[@calfischer1149]

Robert Swift I'd think you could program the bot to listen for input from the controller while moving autonomously and take instructions from it when it gets them

[@myperspective5091]

Cal fischer
Is that robot your thesis project?

[@jim0_o]

Why the fuck are people so negative toward this video? I mean what the hell is wrong with people...

[@MisterMajister]

+Jim R. Didriksen Wow, slow down. I think the critique is very relevant. It was misleading and not as educational as 99% of their other videos. The robot did barely work and the concept was pretty simple. I personally voted it down because I want more complex and educational stuff with a great presentation. I also think the authors appreciate feedback.

[@JamWard]

Not bad! I've just started to build one like this myself. I'm working with python though, instead of C+

[@questionerizator]

Well, maybe it would be easier to hack one of those robotic vacuum cleaners, but that is maybe too naive :|

[@SigurdKristvik]

Aside from the vocal minority here, it's the essentials of robotics and it's affordable :)
It's already somewhat autonomous, yet it's not perfected yet.

[@NiLowther]

"The English of London!"

[@NikolajLepka]

an accelerometer wouldn't register tilt... you need a gyrometer for that

[@bmurph24]

+Nikolaj Lepka often times when people say accelerometer they mean both

[@NikolajLepka]

bmurph24 still there's a very clear distinction between them

[@yekutielbenheshel354]

I like the topic and content but the editing, um, well, I guess it was done in a hurry or by someone who was just learning how to edit.

[@V0MAG]

great

[@Soulfyres]

Is the crashing into things a hardware or software issue?

[@joshuajurgensmeier4534]

+King Kek Its always a hardware issue.

[@Soulfyres]

+Joshua Jurgensmeier Couldn't the AI have been programmed poorly

[@colibrimecatronic9922]

+Joshua Jurgensmeier Usually it's the software that fails.

[@litarea]

to me it looked like the wheels just couldn't turn sharp enough.

[@shayne233]

Neither, it's a feature.

[@jqerty]

I think he needs advanced lego

[@calfischer1149]

the standard os is raspbian; noobs is the installer

[@SurajGrewal]

I don't think autonomous robots are worth it... manually operated ones would be way easier to make and yet be more useful.
The world is already overpopulated. no shortage for robot operator

[@jakejakeboom]

there's not always going to be a reliable connection/radio signal, especially for robots operating in dangerous areas. also, latency can be a huge issue (space exploration). This isn't exactly an example of state-of-the-art autonomous robotics either

[@SurajGrewal]

working on such problems is easier than full autonomity.

[@jakejakeboom]

well the latency problem can't be fixed

[@R9000]

+Suraj Grewal No offence, but saying overpopulation => no shortage of X job doesn't make sense. If that were true, there would be no shortage of any skill set, and there blatantly is.

[@SurajGrewal]

we've controlled robots on mars, no place on earth's land is out of reach comparatively

[@obiwanjacobi]

This is hardly worth showing. There are millions of hobbyists (exaggerated to make a point) that can do better.

[@filip8600]

Why use a Raspberry when Lego sells the complete package? Have you heard of LEGO Mindstorm?

[@puskajussi37]

+Filip8600 It actually is Mindstorm. The pi just controls the lego-unit.

[@filip8600]

Okay. But why go though all that trouble then 😨

[@puskajussi37]

Dunno. For fun. Or maybe they didn't know how to read the instructions.

[@joshstead6078]

+Filip8600 I feel like you didn't watch the video properly

[@caseythimm5522]

+puskajussi37 It is actually Lego Power Functions that is on the car. Mindstorms is like a Raspberry pi and power functions is like just wiring up some motors to a receiver connected to a remote.

[@timuralmaev219]

Hey I built this thing:D

[@Urf93]

Lame.

[@paulg.9596]

First

[@paulg.9596]

On an unrelated note. Þis was a good video, showing off a crude machine wiþ interesting properties

[@longalexislong]

+Paul “Turtles” G. bringing þe þorn back I see ;)