Thymio II funicular for education

Motivation

This page presents a funicular created to be used with exercises in the classroom. Its specialities are:

  • how it is constructed
  • the use of a LEGO Educational set (9695)
  • a broad spectrum of possible uses
  • Required material:

Needed for this construction are:

  • a Thymio II robot
  • a LEGO Educational set 9695
  • 8 straight rails
  • 2 blocks of train wheels
  • a wooden plank 140-145 cm long
  • two wood screws with 3mm diameter and 10mm length
  • a 3m long piece of string

Overall view

The complete funicular looks like this:

funi-total.jpg

Close-up:

funi-carre.jpg

Assembly

There are two main parts: fixed (rails) and mobile (robot on trolley)

Rail assembly

The 8 rails are mounted on the wooden plank using the two screws, one through the top sleeper, one through the bottom one:

vis-rail.jpg

Robot-trolley assembly

The robot-trolley is made up of two structures.
The two winches fixed to the wheels:

montage-roue.jpg

The trolley structure:

structure-chariot.jpg

Winch assembly

The required parts are:

pieces-treuil.png

The winch is constructed like this (two are needed):

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Here is the file for Lego Digital designer.
One end of the string is rolled up on the black axle.

treuil-detail.jpg

It is mounted on the wheels by the blue parts:

montage-roue.jpg

Trolley assembly

The trolley is assembled with the following parts:

pieces-chariot-700.png

Here are the steps to construct the base platform

chariot.jpg

The file for Lego Digital Designer can be found here.
Here are the steps to be taken:

Step2.png
Step3.png
Step4.png
Step5.png
Step6.png
Step7.png
Step8.png
Step9.png
Step10.png
Step11.png

Frame assembly

Next the frame is made, based on side pillars and a horizontal connecting bar:

For these pillars the following parts are needed:

pieces-cadre.png

The assembly proceeds as follows (file for Lego Digital designer) :

Step3%281%29.png
Step4%281%29.png
Step6%281%29.png
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Step1%282%29.png
Step2%282%29.png
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Step8%281%29.png

Assembly of trolley and frame

Remove the long bar from the remainder of the frame. The trolley is placed under the Thymio II and fixed using the two side pillars. The blue pieces are inserted in the cross-shaped holes in the sides of Thymio II. Finally the vertical bar is added to stabilise everything:

funi-montage.jpgtop-view-funi.jpg

Programming

With this construction several sorts of programming can be explored:

  • Ascend and descend using the obedient behaviour, testing with an infrared remote control
  • Ascend and descend with the buttons (simple program)
  • Detect the rail end with a marker between the rails detected by the bottom sensors
  • Make intermediate stops with similar markers
  • Display the sensor response with a graph using Aseba Studio
  • Count the sleepers using the bottom sensors
  • Add sound (voice recording) to announce the stops
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