Robot Inspiration Series #6: Computer-Interacting Robots

This week's Robot Inspiration might sound a little advanced: make a robot that interacts with the computer. However, this can actually be quite easy, while opening up a host of new applications. As I posted about here and here, you can use RoboRealm to easily make robots interact with the computer in a variety of ways. Now RoboRealm has added more computer capability to their software.

Keyboard: Besides taking input from the keyboard, you can make a robot control the keyboard. In other words, I could have my robot write a post on this blog! In terms of taking input from the keyboard, here's a video of a "NXT Messenger" I made using RoboRealm. With the range of BT, I can type a message up here in my room, and my mom can read it in the kitchen, two floors down, on the NXT brick!


(sorry for the low quality of the NXT screen... putting the video in the blogger player made it much harder to read the text on the NXT screen)

Mouse: Now RoboRealm lets you get the coordinates of a computer mouse and even control the mouse. Here's a video of my computer mouse controlling a cursor on the NXT screen:



-Jonathan

EDIT: You can get the two .robo (RoboRealm) files here and here (to get them you'll need to right-click->Save Target As). You can get the two NXT-G programs here and here. Just to clarify what goes on, the .robo files read inputs from the computer and send the data to the NXT brick via BT, and the NXT-G files recieve the data and control the actual behaviors of the NXT Brick.

EDIT 2: You can get the My Block for the Keyboard NXT-G program here.