This chimney climber should be considered as the first ‘robotic’ climber in the series. Contrary to the older two climbers, this robot uses sensors to tell the robot about its environment. A Mindsensors.com acceleration sensor measures the robot’s tilt on one axis. When unbalanced, the wheel speeds can be adjusted to regain balance. An Ultrasonic Sensor at the top detects the ceiling to let the robot know it cannot go further. When it sees the ceiling, it returns to the ground, while still actively balancing.
A structural improvement in this design is that the center of gravity is now located below the wheels so that the robot is also naturally balanced on the axis that cannot be actively controlled. The downside is that this requires one additional motor to first extend the wheels to the walls. Note that once stretched and moving upwards, this third motor is switched off. From here, the friction due to the robot’s weight provides enough grip.
Other chimney climbers in this series:
Every time I created a new climber, I tried to tackle a new design challenge, to make the robots faster, stronger, more stable and smarter. Follow the links below, and read the pages in order to learn about my findings in the design process.
- Chimney Climber: August 2006 (original design)
- NeXT Chimney Climber: February 2007 (faster)
- Self Stabilizing Chimney Climber: August 2008 (more stable and smarter)
- Compact Chimney Climber: July 2009 (NXT 2.0 Only)
what is the programming instructions?
There are no instructions for this robot, but you can build the newer Compact Chimney Climber,(CCC), in Laurens Valk’s Book, the Lego MIndstorms 2.0 Discovery book.