Creating a Braille Reading Robot with Lego Mindstorm

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Abstract

The goal of the Bump-Code Decipherer was to try to get a robot to play music

when it read Braille, in this case, made of Lego® pieces. The robot read things with touch

sensors, much like a person would read Braille with their fingers, and once it finished a

row of musical notes, it would play out what it read. Though not perfect, it can play out

music given input. Given more time, I would be able to add sharps, flats and various

other musical ornaments and also make the reading process more precise.

Background

Before the 1800s, blind people had a hard time reading. Their books would be

bulky and consisted of raised letters, which were extremely hard to read. Louis Braille,

the creator of the ingenious system of 6 raised bumps, was not born blind. However, he

was blinded when he was 4-years-old. Louis soon found that reading was extremely

difficult. In 1821, Louis learned of “night writing,” which consisted of 12 raised bumps

that allowed soldiers to communicate without speaking. Though young, Louis condensed

this 12 dot system into one that used only 6. After he became comfortable with this

system, he began expanding it to include musical notation as well. This system of writing

in 6 dots became known as Braille, but only after the adapter died.

The Bump-Code Decipherer reads in Braille musical notation and makes a song

based on what it reads. This is useful for people who want to make sure the Braille music

sheet they produce is correct. It is also useful for blind musicians to get a feel for what

the music they play should sound like.

Procedure

The robot is made from the Lego® MindstormÔ kit. It uses an RCX 1.0 and is

programmed using NQC, a programming language like C crea...

... middle of paper ...

...at condition they

are in, how full the batteries are and how much it has to move, it does not always read in

exactly what it is supposed to. Given more time, I would make it so that the tray would

move roughly to the correct position and then move back and forth quickly (using the

s2s() function) until it made sure that it was positioned exactly right so that it could read

both rows correctly 100% of the time if the back-and-forth rack moved. Given a better

robot and more time, I would be able to code in more notes, such as sharps and flats.

References

Braille Music. Retrieved July 23, 2005 from the World Wide Web:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille_music

Louis Braille Biography. Retrieved July 22, 2005 from the World Wide Web:

http://www.afb.org/braillebug/louis_braille_bio.asp

Braum, D. (2003). Definitive Guide to Lego® MindstormsÔ, Second Edition.

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