Page 126 - The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots

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Why Should I Care?

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Before you tear your hair out trying to get a GP S nit to talk to your RCX, think about what you're trying to do. Do you really
n eed to know precisely where the robot is? Using precise positioning and having the robot build a map of its world are both
techniques of the big-metal a rtificial intelligence (AI) approach to mobile robotics. The RCX is not very powerful. If you just
w ant to avoid table legs and walls, build a bumper and back up when you hit something. After all, you probably won't be able
to build a map of the world in your RCX, no matter what prog ramming environment you use.

Online Resources

Directional Transmission

http://www.sonic.net/~rci/transmission.htm
This page, created by Michael Powell, describes the basic principle of the directional transmission with detailed photographs.

Ben's Lego Creations

http://www.pobox.com/~benw/lego/
This page contains some fascinating robots created by Ben Williamson. A modified version of Ben's FetchBot arm was used as
Minerva's grabber arm. These robots are mechanically superlative; check them out.

"Where am I?"—Systems and Methods for Mobile Robot Positioning

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~johannb/position.htm
Johann Borenstein's book about mobile robot navigation can be downloaded from this site as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. The
whole book is 13 Mb, which is a little hefty for my dial-up Internet connection, but a free book is a free book. It's gotten good
reviews from the MINDSTORMS online community.