Chapter 6 Building Strategies

The main purpose of this chapter is to completely perceive basic techniques with the studless beam and design our own robots. To begin, the first technique is to make a best assembly of the beams. This technique is connecting two or more beams. Depending on the situations, we can use more rigid assembly instead of simply connecting two straight beams. However, we need to consider tension and compression to make more rigid assembly. These are forces that can act upon objects. Tension is a force that attempts to stretch or lengthen an object while compression to shorten or compact an object. These two forces are significant elements, because we can make a stronger robot by perfectly understanding them. There is another important element, which is weight. Weight determines the magnitude of inertia, which is the tendency that objects have to resist changes when in a state of motion or rest. For instance, when the bus suddenly starts to move, passengers may fall down, because they tend to be stationary but the bus makes them move forward. This inertia is important because as the magnitude of the inertia increases (in other words, as the weight increases) it’s very hard for robot to change its motion from the previous. Obviously we don’t want to design a robot that has a single motion. The second technique is modularity. While building our robot, we will likely have to dismantle and rebuild it, or parts of it. Therefore, it’s best to make our model by maximizing modularity. In other words, we should make it as easy to take apart as possible. The last technique is hybrid. It isn’t always necessary to make an assembly with the beams only. We can utilize the LEGO TECHNIC pieces too in order to make innovative and interesting creations. In my opinion, understanding this hybrid is very important, because this is the one that encourages us to design our own robot, which is the purpose of this chapter.