ROBOTC.net Blog  

We are extremely excited to announce our new teacher certification courses! A “Robotics Academy Certified Instructor” is officially certified by Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Academy.  The certification will provide an official and public recognition of your competencies and capabilities to teach, program, and troubleshoot educational robots. Check out our most recent video that gives you some more details …

Contact training@rec.ri.cmu.edu to learn more!FAQ:

• What is the certification?
  • The certification is proof from a robotics education world leader that you know how to program and troubleshoot robots.
• Does this course offer college credit?
  • The course offers continuing education credit and documents that you have participated in 36 hours worth of instruction at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Academy.  It is not a college credit course.
• What happens if I don’t pass the certification test?
  • The certification test is offered after you complete the course.  If you don’t pass the certification test, you will have the opportunity to retake the exam one month later.
• Can I use Robot Virtual Worlds in my classroom?
  • Yes, but Robot Virtual Worlds is currently only available for ROBOTC software.
• How do I register for the course?
  • Go to Professional Development Robotics Academy Classes 2013 and follow the instructions.
• Does the Robotics Academy take Purchase Orders?
  • Yes.
• When should I register?
  • As soon as possible. The courses are limited to 24 students per class and will fill up quickly.
• When are courses offered?
  • You can find a list of all classes available here – Professional Development Robotics Academy Classes 2013

All ROBOTC related training is listed below:

We are thrilled to announce the new Single and Team perpetual licenses available for Robot Virtual Worlds!! Previously, we only offered Classroom licenses for perpetual users, but due to user requests, we have now added Single and Team options. Read the rest of this entry »

Martin Mason, professor of Physics and Engineering at Mt. San Antonio College and ROBOTC user, has developed a new VEXduino Shield. He created a board that you can plug in VEX sensors but, combined with ROBOTC, uses an Arduino to control the robot instead of a Cortex or PIC. Combining the Shield with an Arduino, some VEX parts, and a small breadboard is a perfect recipe for teaching electronics with the ROBOTC for Arduino!

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We are very excited to announce that today is the first day of Spring and …. the first day of ROBOTC 3.60! ROBOTC is the premiere robotics programming language for educational robotics and competitions. ROBOTC is a C-Based Programming Language with an Easy-to-Use Development Environment. We are really proud of this release and can’t wait to hear what you think! Remember, we could not do this without your support and feedback. We hope you’ll continue to share your comments with us, either in the forums or on our Facebook or Twitter page.
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While scouring Vimeo a couple weeks ago, I came across a “Vimeo Staff Pick” time-lapse video featuring beautiful landscapes, lakes, mountains, and skies called “Hdr Skies.” When looking in the description for more details, I noticed that ROBOTC was listed! I sent the creator, Tanguy Louvigny, an email to learn more about his process with ROBOTC and time-lapse photography. He was nice enough to answer some questions for us …

- When did you start using ROBOTC?

I started using ROBOTC some 3 years ago, when I started my TETRIX based time-lapse rig project.

- What made you decide to program your time lapse rig with ROBOTC?

Version 2 of my rig used three motors to move the camera on three different axis, and was thus more complex to program. That’s when I decided I needed something more convenient and powerful to be able to control the TETRIX encoders and synchronize the motors with the camera shots. ROBOTC was the solution to my problems and worked like a charm.

- What did you use to build your rig?

My goal with this project was to construct a motorized base for my camera to add movement in my time lapse clips. The first, one axis version of the rig simply used a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 kit to support the camera. For version 2, I needed more robust parts and powerful motors to be abled to sustain the weight of new and bigger cameras, so I went for a TETRIX kit that I would couple with the MINDSTORMS brick to control the motors.

- How long was this video in production?

The ”Hdr skies” video was a compilation of one year of time lapse shots. Since then, as I shoot more, I try to achieve a new video every six months or so.

- How has your experience been with ROBOTC?

I had a great time programming with it, I already knew a bit of C, so I found it very easy and natural to use, in fact so simple I was rapidly able to code all my ideas with ease!

- Do you have any other projects coming up that you are using ROBOTC with?

My next project is a new TETRIX based five axis rig using a motorized jib. I’ll use ROBOTC to control the motors and build a new MINDSTORMS interface to program the moves. I’m also exploring new possibilities to use ROBOTC to fire the camera directly, thus simplifying the robot/camera synchronizing part.

Tanguy also mentioned that all his time lapse videos are made with the rig.

Thank you so much Tanguy for sharing your awesome project! Do you have a cool projects that you created using ROBOTC? If so, let us know! We’d love to feature it here.

When it comes to setting up any new robot, the age-old saying ‘knowledge is power’ tends to ring particularly true. This is why one can find a variety of beginner guides already available, such as the Video Curriculum Trainer and the ‘Getting Started with NXT and TETRIX’ ROBOTC wiki guide. There’s no such thing as too much knowledge, though, and the more tools a roboticist has at their fingertips the higher their chance for success.

Because of this, we are pleasantly surprised by the depth of content covered by Avi, aka TheProgreammerDude’s YouTube tutorial video. Avi is a member of FTC team 5773. Not only is his tutorial straight from the screen of an FTC team programmer, it focuses on ROBOTC programming concepts specifically for the FTC competition (such as using competition templates and setting up a TETRIX robot using the Motors and Sensors Setup window).

If you’re looking add this video set to your ROBOTC toolkit, be sure to check out the first video in his series.

Have you created a ROBOTC or Robot Virtual Worlds tutorial? If so, let us know!

Thank you to everyone who downloaded the new RVW Level Builder and provided feedback! We’ve released version 2.01 of the software, which addresses the issues some of you were seeing. It can be downloaded here, under Available Level Packs.

If you haven’t tried out the Level Builder, you definitely should. It allows you to create your own challenges to solve and share with others. (More detail can be found here, in the original blog post) The latest version even includes the Model Importer, which allows you to use your own 3D objects that were created in Autodesk Inventor and SolidWorks:

Here are the major fixes in this release:

• Fixed some large models getting distorted on import
• Auto-generated collider can now be edited
• Added error reporting readout to Model Importer to improve debugging
• Fixed crash conditions when model library is empty
• Removed scale reference from generated model thumbnails
• STL importer better handles small differences in ASCII STL file formats

Thanks again to everyone who provided feedback!

- Jesse Flot

To be more precise, this new Luau Edition of Palm Island is really a “reintroduction”. Our first version of Palm Island was released in the summer of 2011.  Since that time, we’ve learned quite a bit and developed a lot of great features, so we decided to put together this major upgrade to the world.

Whether you’ve used the original version of Palm Island or this version is your first, you will appreciate just how beautiful and vibrant this world is. Take a look at this comparison picture between the two versions (more pictures below):

Of course, the changes are much more than skin deep. Players are immersed in a world where they are programmers-in-training under Commander Roxie Rivet-minder. In addition to programming their robots to traverse the boardwalk path as part of the typical training regiment, they will have to prepare for a Luau Commander Rivet-minder is throwing by setting Lobster Traps, collecting Coconut Clusters, and placing Trash Bins. Just look at some of these shots from the world:

As players make progress, they’ll earn badges in the game, which can also be tied to a CS2N.org (Computer Science Student Network) account (click here to create your free account).

There’s a ton of new features and functionality included in Palm Island: Luau Edition, too many to give justice to in one short blog post, so we’ll be highlighting different features in the coming days and weeks. A quick snapshot of some of these new features includes:

• A completely refreshed world with new art and immersion elements
• New side missions, a keyboard control area, and a line tracking element
• An in-game map and interface that updates as the player makes progress in the world
• A new Tutorial system that allows content to differ whether you’re using Virtual Worlds for Mindstorms or Virtual Worlds for VEX Cortex
• Two highly detailed, printable maps of the island, and a new issue of Robotics Today Magazine
• Measurement tools that allow you to quickly view the distance and angles your robot needs to move
• A new main menu to log in, quickly get to content, switch between robots, and enable/disable features in the world

Of course, the best thing that you can do is download and install Palm Island: Luau Edition from the RVW Level Packs page. Like all of our Virtual Worlds, Palm Island is completely free if you have a Robot Virtual Worlds license, and if you don’t have one you can try it for free. We would love to hear your thoughts about Palm Island! Please share them on our Facebook page, here on the blog, or the ROBOTC.net forums.

- Jesse Flot

ROBOTC community member Mike McFarlane has recently released a plugin for the popular Sublime Text Editor. This new plugin will allow users to edit .c files on both Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms, which can then be opened and compiled in ROBOTC (the Sublime Editor will not be able to compile the code to a robot, unfortunately).

Quote from Mike (full post on the ROBOTC forum):
“I’ve written a plugin for the elegant and productive Sublime Text editor that will allow you to create and edit RobotC code on Mac, Linux and Windows. It’s got autocomplete on the full set of RobotC functions and variables, search via functional and platform category, tabbing between a functions values, syntax aware colouring and code snippets. Only v0-2 right now, but it works…It’s not possible to compile or debug outside the RobotC IDE, but I’ve got some ideas on ways to get the files quickly in and out the IDE.”

For more information on the new plugin, check out Mike’s blog post. If you are comfortable with the Sublime Text Editor and wish to download the plugin directly, you can do so from this site.

Any features you’d like to see added in the future?

Check out the live broadcast of the National Mexico VEX Tournament going on now! All of the teams are using ROBOTC. The broadcast is brought to you by Reeduca, a company dedicated to implementing new technology and robotics education in Mexico.

Live Video streaming by Ustream