The SNATCH3R is one of the most advanced robots in the EV3 Discovery Book. It can autonomously find, grab and lift the infrared beacon. If you like, you can also drive it around using the remote control and pick up objects on the way! You can find step-by-step building instructions in the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3...

This BB8 from Star Wars is a self-balancing robot I developed with Anton Vanhoucke and Ellen Pennings. It’s based on the previous generation of the balancing ball bot, but this one uses omniwheels to drive. In addition to balancing, this allows the robot to turn its head. Balancing happens autonomously using a control loop that...

This robot is able to balance itself on a ball, using a mechanical design and software that is very similar to two segway type of robots running at the same time. One of these “segways” uses two motors and a gyroscopic sensor to control the ball in the forward/backward direction, while another set of motors...

The VEX IQ robotics kit comes with several cool sensors, including a gyroscope. Perhaps not surprisingly, I wondered if it could be used to create a self balancing robot. And it can! I’ve provided the program and building instructions below so you can build your own balancing robot. You can build it with the basic...

The EXPLOR3R is the first robot in The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book. It’s a versatile wheeled vehicle that uses sensors to navigate around a room and follow lines. Chapters 1-9 in the book use this vehicle to demonstrate the ins and outs of LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 programming. The examples in the book show you...

There’s a new and exciting project over at Kickstarter that combines the BeagleBone Black with LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 motors and sensors. I’ve previously used the BeagleBone in our Zebro Light robot, so I was quite excited about the idea of combining the BeagleBone with MINDSTORMS. The EVB is a cape (a shield) that turns your...

Have you always wanted to sort your LEGO bricks automatically? Now you can build a robot to do it for you! BRICK SORT3R can sort LEGO bricks by color and size. Check out a video of the robot in action below: Tutorial Do you want to build your own brick sorting machine? Complete step-by-step building...

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions to build BALANC3R, a self-balancing LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robot. Requirements 1x LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 #31313 Home Edition. (If you have the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Education Core set #45544, you can build Gyro Boy instead.) 1x Gyroscopic Sensor. Use one of the following sensors: EV3 Gyro by LEGO (pictured below) NXT...

Remember the BrickPi Kickstarter campaign? It’s a shield from Dexter Industries that turns your Raspberry Pi into a LEGO compatible robot controller. The reward for my pledge came in a few weeks ago, and I’ve put it to use in one of my NXT robots: Manty. Obviously, this robot works fine with the NXT, but...

This useless machine is inspired by the “Most Useless Machine EVER” by “SaskView”. Now you can build one too, using the instructions below. All you need is one LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 kit (#31313). Leave a comment if you build one – let’s see how many pointless machines we can build together! Video