Background

"Digi-Robo 01" is a simple robot toy from a Japanese company Gakken. Robot movements are controlled by a simple program disc. This disc is actually a circle divided in 180 small sections. The color of two adjacent (inner and outer) sections (black and white) correspond to robot movement direction. If you read russian you can also read about it in my blog. Or just see the movie.

• Inner and outer sections are both white correspond to robot movement straight ahead.
• Inner section is white and outer section is black turns robot left.
• Inner section is black and outer section is white turns robot right.
• Inner and outer sections are both black stops the robot.

This software can be used to create and print program discs easily.

Steps 1-2-3 for easy robot programming.

Step 1. Setup your screen for easy programming.

Circles on screen represent control points of robot movement. Each circle has a number written in it, this number is the number of steps (circle sections) that robot took to get to this point. First circle with no number in it is a start point. You can use the mouse to drag the start point to appropriate position on screen. If you select any other circle and drag it across the screen it will result in rotation of robot movement direction angle from the start point. Adjust your robot position and angle in a way to be able to fit the path you desire to design on your screen.

Step 2. Design robot path.

Initially robot path as a straight line ahead is projected. Each circle is shown with dotted gray outline, this is because this is not the final robot path yet, only something that will happen if you choose to move robot into given direction from this point. We can call these circles as projected robot path. Also initially first circle of this projected path is marked as “selected”. You can see this because this circle has somewhat thicker outline. As you move the mouse along the projected path more circles get selected. First make sure the first circle (marked as 0.5) is selected. Right click on it. You will see a popup showing you the options to change robot direction from here. You can choose to move robot right, left, straight or stop. The last image you will see is how the program disc will look once you print it. If you choose next direction like this all circles before selected will become final circles of your robot path. You can change that later by unselecting them. Next part of the path will be projected in next direction you choose. If you select left or right the robot will make 360 turn, remaining steps permitting. Tangent ines will show however what direction will be taken if you will chose to stop turn during some stage of it and choose another direction after it.

Step 3. Print program disc.

Use file menu to print program disc and check the resulting path with your real robot. You can also save and load program disc files easily.

Download

Version 0.0.1

Initial public release version.

• Binary JAR (requires Java 6)
• Example files (TXT)
• Source code (Java)

Latest snapshot

Build from SVN.

• Binary JAR (requires Java 6)