Developed at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Informatics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
For more information about this project, please visit Mike Rinderknecht's website .

     The Project

The way a creature is built greatly affects how it behaves. By observation, one can note that birds usually perch and fly, roosting high in the treetops, while fish use their fins to propel themselves into the depths of bodies of water. While the fundamental idea seems basic, the use of such a concept in a field of mechanical design is vital. The connection between design and movement of robotic creatures was the key focus in the explorations of a project at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

 

Three of the 43 phenotypes of moving robots developed by Mike Rinderknecht

 

The following project describes how to design a Tensile Load tester based around the NXT.

For building and project instructions see the accompanying video.

Overview

Tensile Load Tester Programming Instructions Tensile Load Tester Video

Engineering design requires large sets of data and statistics to understand how materials will behave under a set of conditions. One of the material properties important to structural and mechanical engineers is the tensile strength. The tensile strength corresponds to the force, or load, that a certain material can take along its axis before failing or yielding.  For example, if you were to pull on both ends of a string until it snapped, the amount of force needed to break the string would be the tensile failure force (known as normal failure stress).

 

Note: To measure the force, we will use a Vernier Dual-Range Force Sensor. This sensor can be accessed though Robolab using Vernier's Robobook. The Robobook can be found at http://www.vernier.com/nxt/.  We will also employ a NXT motor, touch sensor and two gear boxes.

The 2009 LEGO Engineering Symposium will take place at Tufts University in Medford, MA June 1-2

Real World Engineering: Using the NXT for Earthquake Simulation

      Article by Karen Wickert

Earthquakes are not all alike, and are identified by their strength on the Richter Scale of magnitude. The seismic waveforms generated during a quake depend on many factors including including fault geometry and rock type, wave travel path, soil composition, nearby mountains and other geological structures, and location of the origin of the quake. The interaction of an earthquake with a structure is modeled by engineers, particularly civil or structural engineers, to produce the Response Spectrum for that particular quake. The Response Spectrum is a measure of how much a structure will respond to that particular earthquake and depends on the stiffness and mass of the structure and its damping. When an engineer wishes to perform a test on a structure in the laboratory, he or she defines a Required Response Spectrum, or RRS.  This RRS can then be used to create a motion in the lab to simulate a quake based on its particular wave patterns, allowing for further study through the reproduction of the original motions.  The equipment that reproduces these motions is called a shake table.  RRS are typically used when a quick description of the earthquake  is needed, as they clearly indicate what effects a certain waveform will have on a certain building.