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Engineers Use Legos, Too!
jconley writes: "Excite is carrying a story discussing how engineers are using Legos, not just kids! Interesting read, dives a bit into the history of Legos and Mindstorm. You can read the story here. "
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...by the competition, specifically Mattel. (geek-unfriendly Mattel, from what I read here on /.)
:-)
A little more than a year ago I was working as a designer for the Mattel Toylab, a "toy think tank" that developed product in conjunction with Intel's Smart Toy Lab (in Portland) and other Mattel divisions. We went out and bought a Mindstorms, with the expressed purpose to open the box and build a working robot within an hour without reading the instructions. Well, no one managed to do it... Mindstorms is too complex for no-brainer assembly, which is a large part of the appeal for engineers and the like.
However, Mattel's audience consists mainly of children 3-10, so we were tasked with the creation of a "no brainer Mindstorms robot." We came up with a sphere-shaped central driver unit, radio controlled or pre-programmable a la "Big Track," with snap on robot-accessories (it would come with two utility arms, the others would be sold seperately, of course
The idea was to sell a robot that kids could have up and running within minutes of opening the box, yet still have a feeling of "pride of construction" (from snapping on the arms etc.) Software included with the robot would allow kids to simulate how much better their robot could be if they went out and bought the extra accessories (essentially an advertisement masquerading as educational software).
The project got to the prototype phase, but then stalled- partly due to Mattel's financial trouble causing the company to stop looking forward, and start falling back on "safe" bets (a bad idea IMHO) but also due to the fact it would have been too cheap! The robot would have sold for $40-$60 (not surprising, considering it was just a tarted-up remote control vehicle- programming was limited to "movement macros") and thus would be "losing" the $140-$120 that Mindstorms was capturing. By the time I left Mattel for a dot-com startup, I was seeing far more complex robots being prototyped, but these were mainly from the Intel portion of the lab, and were all-in-one solutions- no assembly required. Most involved remote surveillance via video and sound transmitted wirelessly to your PC from a radio controlled "robot."
So, don't be surprised if the next robots to market sport an "Intel Inside" sticker!
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
Why would engineers use Kids? And why is Lego better than Kids?
Other great Lego hacks:
- If you can hack a little FORTH, you can make a Mindstorms toy attached to someone's Solaris or SGI box seek out and store their password file when the toy is powered up. I don't know why, but there's something which appeals to my warped sense of humour in building a little model of a Trojan Horse, which is itself a Trojan
:-) - I once made a lego "exoskeleton" for my left hand while playing guitar in a thrashadelic metal band. Basically an intertial doohickey that tapped down a fret above my pinky finger, giving me access to extended reach and some wild chromatic licks, when playing in the right key.
- The plastic axles from a Technics kit are just the ticket if you want to unscrew the cooling fan from most Mac models, but don't have the right Allen key
- Those little rubber tyres can be used as sealing O-rings in all models of the Space Shuttle before Atlantis, if you can't find the right part. But fer chrissakes don't let them get cold overnight; that's bad shit.
- And finally, with a bit of skill, a motorised Technics kit, and a pound and a half of liver (warmed in a microwave), you can hack up a reasonable subsititute for female company.
Happy Lego hackingYou mean kids also play with lego?
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-