"Hobbyists started the PC era, hobbyists with dial-up modems created BBS systems and started the internet era, and now robot hobbyists are creating the robotics era."
-Sinclair Donald
Senior Robotics Engineer
How to make a unique and delightful, animated music-box type birthday cake?
Hide some Lego Mindstorms under the cake and use pipecleaner linkages fed through drinking straw tunnels to move whatever character the lucky birthday person loves.
Love Legos? Get ready for a challenging new multiplayer gaming experience featuring you and other Lego addicts worldwide when the online Lego Universe game is released next year.
Related link: Massively Multiplayer Games
Just a few months behind the product release in the US and Europe, Lego Japan will be rolling out the new WeDo robot educational system here in July. Positioned at a younger student population than it’s well established Mindstorms series, Lego Japan stated that the new robot education system can be effectively used to introduce robotic concepts as early as the first grade in elementary school.
In terms of creativity and possible terror factor, this Lego robot monster, built with a mash-up of Mindstorms NXT, BIONICLE, Technic, and classic Lego bricks, is certainly a 10+.
Continue reading "Lego Robot Goes Bump in the Night (Video)" »
William Cox discovered that Lego is selling a special, limited edition, black Mindstorms NXT controller Brick to celebrate Mindstorm’s 10th anniversary
It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years already. We can still remember how amazing the original Mindstorms promotional videos were, and how quickly we pulled out our credit card to order one each of all the original Mindstorm kits. It was one of those few purchases that continues to enrich our lives after a decade.
What's going on today in my crazy robot world?
Bazmarc, on Youtube, posted a series of videos(see below) showing his totally cool implementation of the WALL-E robot constructed completely from stock Lego NXT Mindstorms robot system parts. Not only is the robot realistic, it also features some very emotional, and touching, eye movements.
Bazmarc's robot creation does use some third party components, like Mindsensors and HiTechnic - both Lego certified. According to comments on his build videos, the robot uses "1 NXT with rechargable pack, 3 Servo Motors, 4 PF motors, 2 IR receiver, 1 UltraSonic sensor, 1 sound sensor, 1 IRlink, 1 NXTservo module and 1 mini RC servo, 10 AA batteries and Lego from the Bulldozer #8275 and other parts from various technic sets."
Continue reading "Lego Builder Creates a Great WALL-E Clone (Video)" »
According to their 2007 Annual Report, released yesterday in Denmark, The LEGO Group posted strong sales and profits results last year. In spite of the fact that the total toy market dropped by around 2% in 2007 compared to the previous year, LEGO sales and profits continued to make significant gains. LEGO worldwide sales increased by 2.6%. Adjusted for exchange rate fluctuations, total
sales grew by a surprising 6%. All of the group's markets saw sales increases during 2007, while the overall market was falling significantly.
The company also reported continued adoption of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot kits in the education market worldwide with over 150,000 units sold during 2007.
It's been a while since we published one of our 'Robot Builder Profiles', so we thought it's about time that we made up for our shortcoming by posting a series of interviews with one of the best - Jin Sato.
"Jin-san", as he is often referred to by friends here in Japan, is a world class humanoid robot designer and a top ROBO-ONE competitor. Over the past five years he built ten completely new humanoids, an average of two per year, from the ground up. In many cases, he did all the design and hardware fabrication as well as developing the controller electronics and supporting software.
We'll delve into some of his educational, humanoid, and other robotic, projects in upcoming posts, but we thought the most appropriate place to start would be with his earlier LEGO Mindstorms creations, especially his 'MIBO' dog robot clone of Sony's popular AIBO. In the video interview below, Jin demonstrates the original MIBO robot while explaining some of the the robots design features, and why he took on such a daunting challenge.
Continue reading "Robot Builder Profile: Jin Sato - Part 1 (Video)" »
Remember a few months back when everyone was so excited and amazed by the RB2000 humanoid robot that could do giant loops on the horizontal bar?
Well, it turns out that it's possible to achieve the same feat using the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics system, as you can see in the video clip below.
Continue reading "LEGO Mindstorms NXT Robot Takes On The RB2000 At Gymnastics (Video)" »
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