The LEGO Mindstorms NXT Robot Kit

Author JoeDigital

The building block with a brain — The Lego Mindstorms NXT

The LEGO® is one of the most popular toys ever invented. Robots have excited the minds of young and old alike, sparking images of futuristic toys and household helpers. Combine the two, and you’ve got the the LEGO Mindstorms NXT. With a 32-bit processor, support for USB 2.0 and Bluetooth, and programming software in both PC and Macintosh versions, this robot building kit is priced enticingly at US$249. A LEGO robot that can solve a Rubiks Cube

The LEGO NXT website boasts a Do-it-yourself robot that can be assembled in as little as 30 minutes, using “a highly versatile palette of LEGO Technic elements”, which combine “state of the art ultrasonic, sound, light, and touch sensors”. Novices and experts alike can build humanoid, vehicular, and animalistic robots whichcan even be operated via Bluetooth equipped cellphones.

And if building a robot from a kit isn’t enough to satisfy your creative urges, the software is open source, with Software Development Kits (SDK) available so programmers can create their own software, develop new hardware, and modify existing applications to suit their own tastes. Microsoft even got in on the fun with their own robotics development forum.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net