Research Paper: Introduction

The Introduction of a Paper provides general background information regarding the topic of discussion of the Research Paper. The Introduction is a good item to look over if you wish to fully understand the entire Paper, but is not an essential component to read.

All of mankind has often dreamed of creating completely autonomous robots that can sufficiently accomplish some of the world's less-desirable tasks, with little or no human intervention. Over the past years, many attempts have been made at creating such robots, and many robot prototypes have been developed. However the field was limited to scientists, and many of these prototypes were extremely expensive and complicated. A solution had to be made. Five years ago LEGO opened their new robots system to the public. Designed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention System proved to be the perfect solution to the growing need for affordable and easy-to-use artificial intelligence robots. This new invention allowed children and adults to program and build their own robots that could perform a multitude of tasks. The tasks varied from simple backward and forward movements to more complex behavior based actions.

LEGOs were invented in the 1930s for children in Denmark, who had limited recreational activities available during rainy days. Its name originated from the German words "Leg" and "Godt," meaning, "play well." Gradually, LEGO further developed their idea, and the LEGO TECHNIC system, which added gears and pulleys to the easy to use platform, was created. The LEGO Mindstorms were later developed and thus marked the beginning of affordable AI systems.

The main component, or brain, of the RIS is the RCX (Robotic Command Explorer) "brick". The programmable LEGO brick contains three sensor inputs (for data input from touch sensors, light sensors, temperature sensors, and rotation sensors), three sensor outputs (mainly used for motors), four user buttons (to manually control the RCX), a simple LCD display (for limited displayed information regarding the RCX's current status), an IR (infrared) transceiver (for communication between PC and RCX), and a minicomputer with 32 kilobytes of RAM based on Hitachi H8 micro controller. As for programming, there are a large variety of languages besides the standard LEGO software used to program the RCX. The more popular include NQC (Not Quite C), ROBOLAB, Python Robotics, and LEGOLOG.

Although the Robotics Invention System provides a great learning tool for children it is also limited. The standard LEGO software, although visually appealing, allows for only limited actions. In addition the RCX is subject to the elements, which limits the environments it can function in. For example, water is detrimental to the electrical components; therefore it is only operational on land. Batteries also pose a problem. The removal of the batteries during changing can easily erase the memory and when batteries loose their charge, motors function differently. This could seriously affect research experiments and programs.

We can, using the Mindstorms kit, build and program a "Rover-Bot", "Crane-Bot", and "Sort-Bot" that can communicate and interact with each other to transport ping-pong balls from one location to another without human intervention.

In this paper, we present a unique network of three RCX robots "working" in synchrony to accomplish a specific task. Each robot is assigned a certain limited role, and when the actions of the three robots are united, the robotic network should be able to successfully transport ping-pong balls from a given area to a given dumping location, without any type of human intervention. The specific robots described in this paper include a "Rover-Bot", "Crane-Bot", and a "Sort-Bot". The Rover-Bot will seek out different color ping-pong balls and then take them to the Crane-Bot who will pass them to the Sort-Bot. Here the ping-pong balls are sorted by color and placed in their respected cans.