Try making a black line on a light-colored floor with black electrical tape, then start the robot facing perpendicular to the line at any distance away.  It should stop right at the line.

Line Sensor

Now if you make a large black square (or any shape) with electrical tape on a light-colored floor and start Multi-Bot inside the box, it will try to drive around inside the box "bouncing off" the borders and staying inside. 

Staying inside an area marked with a colored border is the first step in playing a "Robot Sumo" game, where two robots try to push each other outside of the "ring".  You can play a simple practice Robot Sumo game with one Multi-Bot robot by placing various objects inside the ring with the robot, and see if Multi-Bot with an attachment such as the Sumo Pusher can push them all outside of the ring while staying inside itself.  Try changing the time of the back up and the angle of the turn in the LeftPivotAngle block to get different driving patterns and see which work best.

Line Sensor

Sumo Pusher
(Optional)

• When the Color Sensor sees blue, Multi-Bot will turn left until it is off of the blue color. 
• When the sensor sees green, Multi-Bot will turn right until it is off of the green color.
• When the sensor sees Red, Multi-Bot will stop.
• All other colors will make Multi-Bot drive forward.

If you start on a neutral-colored floor (test to make sure the G3-ColorDrive program drives straight on it first), then you can use colored electrical tape, painters tape, or tape down strips of colored construction paper to mark the borders of the course.  Put blue on the right border, green on the left border, and red at the end, and Multi-Bot will try to drive the course on its own.

Line Sensor

Note that in this kind of line following, the robot is actually following the right edge of the line, not down the middle of the line as you might expect.  The robot tries to keep the black line just to the left of the sensor and the open floor to the right of the sensor, by zigzagging back and forth on either side of the edge, alternately seeing the line and the floor.

This line follower is very simple but slow.  Faster line following technique are shown in the Using the Light Sensor Mode section below.

Line Sensor

You can use the Color Sensor in any configuration where it can get close to different objects.  Hold it over objects of different colors to see and hear the results.

Sensing small round objects is actually challenging for the Color Sensor, so you may find cases where the sensor reports the wrong color.  In particular, red and green balls may be mistaken for yellow.  Give it a try and see how well it works for you.

Ball Trap Sensor

Ball Trap Sensor

Start the program with the golfing arm in the straight down position, and a green or red ball in front of Multi-Bot so that it will enter the trap.  Short carpet on the floor works best.

In order to re-position the robot for hitting a ball after trapping it, the program uses a combination of Move and Motor blocks with the Duration set to certain Degree measurements.  This kind of movement is called "Dead Reckoning" and is sensitive to the kind of surface used (carpet, smooth floor, etc).  If Multi-Bot is missing the golf balls, try adjusting the Degree values used. 

Ball Trap Sensor

Golfing Arm

Start the program with the golfing arm in the straight down position, and a a few green and blue balls close by at different angles.  Short carpet on the floor works best.

Multi-Bot will drive out straight to try to find a ball (but will give up if it doesn't find a ball in a certain distance).  If it finds a blue ball, it will leave it alone and back up to the starting position, turn a bit, then head out again looking for another ball.  When it finds a green ball, Multi-Bot will try to hit it then return to the starting position to look for more balls.

Ball Trap Sensor

Golfing Arm

The G10-LineFollow program is very similar to the simple line following program G4-ColorFollow, which used the Color Sensor in color-sensing mode, except that now the Color Sensor Switch is configured to test for total brightness in Light Sensor mode, and therefore must test for a specific brightness threshold value in the Compare field. 

The brightness threshold value specified in G10-LineFollow is set at 36, but you may need to adjust this value depending on the lighting conditions for your test and other factors.  Although using the Color Sensor in Light Sensor mode will ultimately be more powerful for line following and similar tasks (see later programs below), the need to determine an appropriate brightness threshold adds an additional complication.  See the G11-DispLight program below for a method of determining a good threshold value.

Another difference between the G10-LineFollow program and the G4-ColorFollow program is that instead of stopping the inside motor while turning back towards the line, G10-LineFollow runs the inside motor at a low power.  This makes the driving smoother and faster.  You can also easily adjust the speed and smoothness by adjusting the power levels used.

Line Sensor

Since the View feature on the NXT brick menu, where you would normally measure sensor values, does not support the Color Sensor in Light Sensor mode, the G11-DispLight program is included here to display measured values from the Color Sensor in Light Sensor mode. 

To determine a good brightness threshold value for line following (e.g. for G10-LineFollow), do the following:

1. Run the G11-DispLight program on the final robot configured as it will be for the line following.

2. Position the robot with the Color Sensor directly over the black line.  Rest the robot directly on the ground as if it were driving.  The distance from the sensor to the ground is very important to the measurement, so do not hold the robot off of the ground in your hands.

3. Move the robot back and forth slightly until the displayed brightness value is as low as possible.  This is the minimum brightness value that the sensor will expect to see while line following.  Make a note of this number.

4. Position the robot on the floor far away from the black line and note the new number measured.  This is the maximum brightness value that the sensor will expect to see while line following.

5. Take the average of the minimum and maximum values you measured and use this for your brightness threshold value:
        threshold = (minimum + maximum) / 2

The G11-DispLight program also introduces the DisplayNum My Block, which provides a convenient way to display a number on the NXT screen with a label in front, which is useful in a variety of different situations.

Line Sensor

Although the NXT programming software contains a "Calibrate Sensors" tool in the Tools menu, this tool does not support the Color Sensor (only the older "Light Sensor").  So G12-LineFollow2 introduces a set of My Blocks that you can use to conveniently calibrate the Color Sensor in Light Sensor mode and use the calibrated readings in your programs. 

The CheckLightCal My Block will ask you on the NXT screen whether you would like to do a new calibration.  If the robot and lighting conditions have not changed since the last time you calibrated it, you can skip the re-calibration and the program will re-use the measured values from the last calibration, which are stored in a Data File.  Note that the first time you run it, it will force you to calibrate and not ask, since there is no existing calibration data.

The CheckLightCal My Block internally uses another My Block named CalibrateLight which will lead the user through the calibration sequence.  To use the calibration, do the following:

1. When prompted to measure the Darkest (Min) value, position the robot with the Color Sensor directly over the black line.  Rest the robot directly on the ground as if it were driving.  The distance from the sensor to the ground is very important to the measurement, so do not hold the robot off of the ground in your hands.

2. Move the robot back and forth slightly until the displayed Min value is as low as possible.  Press Enter to record the Min value.

3. When prompted to measure the Lightest (Max) value, position the robot on the floor far away from the black line and press Enter to record the Max value.

The LightCalibrated My Block automatically retrieves the Min and Max values stored by the CheckLightCal / CalibrateLight My Blocks and uses them to provide a calibrated brightness reading as a Percent to the program.  The Percent is calculated so that 0 is output for the darkest value expected, and 100 is output for the brightest value expected.  This means that 50 is always a good threshold to use for a dark/light transition, regardless of the lighting conditions (if calibrated to the conditions ahead of time). 

A program using the LightCalibrated My Block can use 50 as a simple dark/light threshold value, or for added convenience, the LightCalibrated My Block also outputs a Dark output (type Logic) that is True if the calibrated brightness (Percent) is < 50. 

The Dark output from LightCalibrated is used by the G12-LineFollow2 program to choose the turning direction from a Logic Switch, and the Percent value is displayed on the screen using the DisplayNum My Block so you can see the calibrated brightness readings during the line following.

Line Sensor

The G12-LineFollow2 program is an example of a "Two State" line follower, because it chooses from two different motor settings (turn left or turn right) depending on the brightness seen from the sensor.  A limitation of a two state line follower is that it can only do one kind of turn in each direction.  If you make the turns gradual, it will drive smoothly but not be able to follow tight turns in the line.  If you make the turns tight, it will be able to follow tight turns in the line but will drive slowly and zigzag a lot even when the line is straight.

The "Four State" strategy in G13-LineFollow4 will choose between four different kinds of turns (sharp right, gradual right, gradual left, sharp left) depending on the sensor value.  This will allow it to use the gradual turns when close to the line edge (when the line is mostly straight) but switch to the tight turns when the sensor falls away from the edge, as will happen for tight turns in the line.

In order to divide the sensor values into four useful ranges, it is necessary to know the exact range of values expected, which is why the calibration provided by the CheckLightCal and LightCalibrated My Blocks is important.  When the sensor values are known to be from 0 to 100, the program can easily assign a tight turn to the last 10% of the top and bottom of the range, but use gradual turns elsewhere.

You can try adjusting the motor speeds used in the four different kinds of turns used in G13-LineFollow4 to change the response to suit different robots and different courses.

Line Sensor

Thinking about how the "Four State" line follower in G13-LineFollow4 works, can you imagine an "Eight State" approach with four different degrees of turn tightness in each direction?  How about even more states?  Programming each of these states individually would be very tedious.  Fortunately, we can come up with a mathematical relationship between the sensor reading and the motor power desired and simply calculate the motor power based on the sensor reading directly, without the need for any Switch blocks to separate the cases.

In the G14-ProFollow program, Math blocks are used to calculate a motor response for each possible sensor reading, so that the amount of turning is proportional to the approximate distance that the sensor is away from the edge of the line that it is following.  The farther away from center, the tighter the turn.  The approximate distance from the center of the line is calculated as the difference between the expected sensor reading at the center (50) and the actual sensor reading.

Understanding the math behind this approach may be harder than understanding the G13-LineFollow4 program, but note that the resulting program is actually simpler in some ways, and it should result in much better line following.

Line Sensor