LEGOS aren't toys any more!

The LEGO Mindstorms kits, and an assortment of LEGO technic pieces and kits, have launched LEGOs into a new era, where they're no longer just toys which fall apart under any reasonable stress; rather they're now the components of insanely strong, resilient, easily integrated, and versatile robot kits.

The educational and social impact of these robot kits has yet to even begun to be explored. They're new, different, and powerful, and I hope to exert at least some small influence regarding how they can be better utilized.

I'm building a number of autonomous and semi-autonomous robots and robot control devices using the available parts from LEGO, and welcome you to be part of the effort. I'm happy to incorporate the ideas of others into my efforts.

I've invested over 1500 US dollars recently in LEGO robot piece-parts, sensors, and motors. I plan to share the resultant robots and the techniques I've used in creating them with the world. I welcome you to be part of this collaboration, as its far from a one-man-show.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll get involved in whatever most motivates you!

Regards,
-Paul Reiber

Lego Mindstorm NXTs

EDIT:  EV3 Units available for sale, end-of-september 2013!  Linux-based Programmable Brick!

LEGO Mindstorm NXT robot kits absolutely ROCK!

I recently bought the latest NXT kit - $250 is a little steep,
but it turned out to be worth every penny.

It comes with only three motors... that's odd... ( ob. bad math joke :-)
-> not four (one for each of the four wheels on a car).
-> not six motors (for the traditional six-degrees-of-
freedom x,y,z,yaw,pitch,roll tooltip model)
...but just three motors. What to do with that?!?

I did some research and learned about holonomic drives and about killough platforms.
Since they use three motors they're ideal designs that'll work with the parts from
just one NXT set (a noble design goal for obvious reasons.)

These are pretty neat - they're triangular platforms capable of accelerating in ANY direction, regardless of its current orientation, and capable of changing/controling the platform's orientation (i.e., indirectly, sensor orientation), regardless of what direction they platform is accelerating in.

This is really useful for line-tracing and other types of goal-seeking robotic control. The same control loop manages both the orientation vector and the acceleration vector of the unit... meaning it can move around while aiming a camera at a fixed point, for example.

Design issues:

how to get the a reasonably low c of g?
How to mount the motors so they can't come off?
Where to mount the controller?
What should the wheels look like?

Control issues:

- bluetooth from the blackberry? How hard?
- clap-on/clap-off easy enough
- various hunting modes

This is all still very much a work in progress... I welcome your input!
-Paul