Lego Mindstorms NXT Introductory Robotics Textbook Project

I have developed a textbook for my Robotics course that I am making available for anyone interested in employing it. We employ the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit and the pbLua programming language. The book is a sequence of exercises for both building and programming robots. The pedagogy employs Socratic-inspired exercises in which students must do experiments in order to answer questions. Additional questions are used to motivate analysis of their activities. The book contains ten laboratory activities:
  1. Introduction to programming in pbLua
  2. Programming a reactive robot using touch sensors
  3. Using the rotation sensor
  4. Using the sonar and light sensors for navigation
  5. Building robots with gears
  6. Building and programming a robot that draws
  7. Building and programming a robot arm
  8. Developing more sophisticated navigation behaviors
  9. Building a robot that walks
  10. Robot racing challenge
I have developed an interactive IDE for pbLua as part of this project. It is designed to facilitate the use of pbLua by beginners. It includes a library that extends the commands provided by the basic pbLua implementation. The book may be purchased through Lulu. I have made available two versions: one with full-color building diagrams, the other with grayscale building diagrams (for about half the price).

Java (leJOS) Version

I previously developed and self-published a version using the leJOS Java implementation for the Mindstorms NXT. While I enjoyed using Java for this purpose, I have found that the material is much more accessible to new programmers when using Lua. Hence, I no longer teach this version of the course. But for anyone interested, I am keeping this version of the book available.
Last modified: Sat Oct 22 11:59:03 CDT 2011