Today was the first day of the MATLAB/LEGO MINDSTORMS Environmental Remote Sensing. The course for undergraduate and graduate students aims to improve their skills to build efficient teams to solve typical problems in earth sciences in acquiring, processing and analyzing typical multispectral, geophysical and geometric data.
Twenty students from the geosciences, computational sciences, geoinformatics, (geo) ecology and other subjects first established the link between the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Brick and MATLAB on the computer. Then they built a four-wheeled vehicle with two large motors, which has a sonic sensor at the front. The students programmed the vehicle in such a way that it drives forward with 50% engine power until it is 30 cm away from an obstacle. Then it drives backwards with 50% engine power for two seconds.
The six groups of 3 to 4 students each had a lot of fun with building LEGO and programming with MATLAB using the LEGO MINDSTORMS hardware support. After about two and a half hours all the groups had solved the tasks, the vehicle drove and stopped as planned so that we can continue with the acquisition of different types of signals in the next weeks. The photo included in this post shows one of the vehicles with a ultrasonic sensor at the front, designed by a group of students.