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Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Announced
Denver_80203 writes "Just when you thought Lego Mindstorms was grinding its last gear, comes the announcement of Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Toolset, with sleek servo motors, an ultrasonic sensor which allows robots to 'see' by responding to movement, a sound sensor which enables robots to react to sound commands (including sound pattern and tone recognition) improved touch and light sensors, and a and a programmable brick with at least 7 or 8 RJ11 type jacks. Robot fun! Out in August 2006, and in true Lego style will cost $249." Wired has a preview of the cover story about the new kit on their site.
But why does it look like an ipod that's been assimilated by the Borg?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I want to go a kick some Korean butt!! If I can program these guys for remote control I'm totally going to save thousands of dollars and spend that on programmers to teach this bot Pride Fighting. Oh, they are so going down!!!
I guess it's about time to break out the theme music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The original (and 2.0) version of their kit was massively popular, and it attracted a "geek base" of fans that wouldn't have accepted your typical "version 2.5". Props to Lego for realizing this and taking a little longer than most companies would to release the "right" product instead of the "quick" product.
Or you might be interested in the OrcBoard robotic controller, which is open source (schematics, layout, firmware, userland tools all GPL). It's being used by a number of robotics classes (6.188, 2.12), and a robotics competition (MASLab) at MIT.
It's a bit different than mindstorms in that it's designed to be used as a slave to a laptop or other more CPU-rich device. But you can use it in stand-alone mode too, if your robots are simple.
-Ed
(disclaimer: creator of orcboard)
I, for one, welcome our new studded-brick-robot overlords.
my wife is not going to be happy about this...
If you look at the high-resolution image, you can see that it has 7 RJ11 jacks and one USB port (top right corner).
The top three RJ11 ports look like servo outputs, the bottom four look like sensor inputs (though the fourth port is unnumbered; wonder why).
I want to buy it now :P
You will be assembled and assimilated.
I know slashdot ran a story on what went wrong, but they are far from dead. There is the FIRST Lego Racing League, which is a robotics compeition for grade school kids across the country. (Which then evolves into higher level products as they advance into high school). Heck I know several kids whose got RIS2.0 sets for Christmas. The parents are tired of their kids only seeing computers as video game machines - these kits are an excellent segway between fun and programming. There are plenty of high school and college kids, even adults doing stuff with them too... for example Jin Sato there is an available C compiler, even a Real Time OS!
-everphilski-
If I'm not mistaken (I never looked too closely at Mindstorms), the previous version was not all that powerful, its processor was relatively simple and could be connected to up to two peripherals? Is that right?
This new one seems much better, do you think it affords more freedom to developers? I wanted to buy some of the previous Mindstorms but it didn't look very powerful. If this is, I'm definitely getting it.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Try Ebay- I picked up 40 or so lbs of unsorted pieces for a good price. Guy even had some cheap lego webcamera thrown in.
"Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!"
I'm sure plenty of patents on robotics and their associated "Intellectual Property" will need to be defended from this kit. Just imagine what young children might build and do with this without close guidance and supervision! They must learn to respect the intellectual rights of other people or companies. Otherwise, society will crumble and we will all have to go back to playing with Lincoln logs and tinker toys... with the appropriate license(s) of course.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I think the neatest Lego thing I've ever seen are this guy's bible stories. He's sold 3 books of them.
The storytelling is great, and his sets are first class. It reminds me of a movie:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/
It isn't at all high-tech or technical. However, I'm guessing that digital cameras and the internet have allowed him to become very well known.
I guess with the robot version, you could make an animation involving robots, which would be cool.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I don't think grinding it's last gears is correct.
Indeed, it's "grinding its last gears".
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I really really hope they provide som sort of API to control it using other languages.
I want to be able to write a program in maybe C#, Java, C++ compile it, translate it and then send it to the control unit.
The old mindstorms biggest annoyance was the stupid interface, okay labview is a lot better but still not the same.
A major problem with LEGO robotics is that they are so much like Microsoft. They really make it difficult to add to the product. The only way I could make the origional kit interesting for kids was to script a Tk interface using Perl's RCX and NQC (not quite c) system calls via their IR tower. This off loaded the application program from the brick to a PC. I have BIG dobts that this particuar kit will simplify the programming with it's newest proprietary programming language (Photoshop like , so they say). If they give the brick an 802.11g wireless interface, the Open Source community will do the rest.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
its basically an upgraded Handyboard...
-everphilski-
It has Bluetooth....does that help?
You know what would be really cool this time around? Macintosh support.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
The wireless is bluetooth. And to the idea that the core software was not expandible, I beg to differ. Just look at some of the off the wall crap you can find with google (sorry, no links, no time, am at work) and mindstorms, like toilet scrubber and the such. NQC is a nice simple way to meld a bit of rw programming skill to mindstorms. I still play with mine almost every weekend. Poo Poo to you.
The word is segue. Segway is that damned scooter thing.
I fear the markets for these toy computers will be very marginal. :-o etc. without having to pay $249.
The good old technics Legos were so much catchier in that you could easily create mechanical thinggies like cars, tractors, robots, gearboxes
What I mean is, this is a pretty expensive price for a few sensors and servos that will get thrown in some toydrawer anyways.
Bluetooth support is awesome. One of the things I did not like about the original was the IR transmitter.
I can't believe they have taken this long to get the next generation of this out. I really thought someone would pip them to the post and grab the market from them. The original mind storm kit was very impressive but it quickly had the smell of death around it. If it wasn't so damn expensive (and I didn't have plenty of other things to do) I would probably get one of these kits. I would like to see an advanced version that was a slave to a CPU rich device as well. Now that would be cool.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
It's got Bluetooth, and they say it will be controllable from a host machine, be it a computer, a PDA, or a mobile phone. What more could you ask for?
But almost http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nqc
Fans of SNOT (Studs Not On Top) Lego design will love this kit, because there aren't any studs. It looks like everything's designed to hook together with Technic axles and connectors, and no "basic brick" connectivity.
When I was a FIRST Lego League coach, the designs often embedded motors, sensors, even the RCX as part of the structure. The latter was usually a bad, bad, idea, since you'd have to disassemble major parts of your bot to replace batteries, and during a competition, you'd replace batteries every other run.
I welcome the sensor-laden motors, bluetooth, ultrasonic 'vision'... but I wonder if they've beefed up the programming any. Lack of backward compatibility is a surprise -- I've got a number of old sensors and motors.
Design for Use, not Construction!
from the article:
There were plenty of strategic blunders behind the dismal results: a misguided foray into making PC software games, expensive licensing arrangements (chiefly with Disney), and designs that puzzled rather than entertained. "We had started to make fire trucks that look like spaceships, building systems that no customer could truly appreciate," says Mads Nipper, a Lego senior vice president. "We had to clean that up."
awesome!
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
From the very Lego page itself:
"The heart of the new system is the NXT brick, an autonomous 32-bit LEGO microprocessor that can be programmed using a PC, or for the first time in the retail offering, a Mac."
Herve S.
Let me tell you, I am buying this the minute it comes out. It looks like Lego really went to bat on the NXT, because they've address all of the problems I had with the original kits and then some. The addition of Bluetooth communication is going to revolutionize this kit as a teaching tool for robotics students, allowing for easy communication between robots for some incredible "Social robotics" experiments. And the price is unbelievable too! Most bluetooth kits are $100 alone. Bravo, lego!
An introductary part of my course (MPhys) was using these things to get across the idea of real-time control systems, so we spent a week in a dark room, trying to get it to track a light source.
One thing that slowed us down was the software on the PC side of things. What they need is a C API.
-irb
Lego Electronic Lab Kit
_ electronic.html
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/lego
Imagine the fun when you come through the detector gate at the airport with your bag full of electronified Lego, blinking and moving...
It would be great if it supported the Roomba Serial Control Interface.
/ 17/0814200&tid=216
Roomba Vacuum Robot Opens to Hackers
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12
I'm not sure where you're shopping for your legos,
but you should be able to find buckets at most stores in the $30-40 range.
And while even that might seem like a lot to pay for a piece of plastic,
you have to consider the lifespan of that piece of plastic.
Legos rarely break...so that means they only get extra sales from replacing lost legos. (which I realize is much more common)
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Lego looks pale and boring in comparison to fischertechnik. VW even built a complete plant using fischertechnik to verify their plan design (see here, it's towards the end). They offer a driver in C, PASCAL, etc. They have IO extensions. Everything's there.
I loved the idea behind the first Mindstorms back when it was released in the late 90s. I have been looking at the Vex kits and other european kits(FischerTechnik). The one thing that I wonder is how easy is it going to be able to use the other Technic kits with this new system. They probably will wait to see how well this does before coming out with an offical expansion (ie treads). It would be awesome if they allowed the servos and sensors to be purchase through Lego Factory. Overall I think this is great but I have a slight hesitation because it looks too sleek ("We wanted to create robots with more personality," Lund says. "We wanted them to go from being more mechanical to more human."). To me if you can do very functional and/or fun projects with the kits it does not matter how it looks.
--
Decrement the counter to zero
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
There are actually many ways to program the original Mindstorms RCX. Although initially the only language was the one it came with, it was soon hacked. Languages were developed that took advantage of the default firmware (NQC), but many more were created that completely replaced the existing firmware. You could cross-compile C for it, and there was also a tiny Java VM that ran on it. Neither of these offloaded stuff to the PC.
Robot Magazine has an article on the new brick as well of a movie of some robots in action created with the new kit.
I made the mistake of my live by selling three bags full of Lego/Lego Technic for 200 Deutschmark at a school tradefair back in 7th grade. Well, I thought I made a good deal back then, but today I know that guy totally ripped me off. ;-(
I grew up playing with RCX 1.0 and Wired seems to have somehow portrayed it as a failure...
(From one of the images, I'm guessing of a magazine spread)
"Building Blocks" - "Two-by-four" lego blocks vs. Technic Blocks a.k.a. Studless legos
-Okay, firstly "Technic" was a brand of lego's geared towards the technological kids like me who liked to play with motors and buttons. Second, the RCX had 4 holes that could be used with studless legos anyway, all they did with this new thing was add a few more and take off the studs.
"User Interface" - "Non-intuitive interface, RCX Code Commands, PC Only" vs "Intuitive GUI, drag-and-drop icons, PC and Mac"
-Whoever said RCX 1.0 wasn't intuitive is crazy, programming with the RCX was about the most basic type of programming I've ever done in my life. You dragged little blocks around to configure the order of the program. You would drag, for example a "Wait Ten Seconds" green block over someplace and then put a "Turn the motor on" purple block right below it. Then you'd download it to your brick (okay, this was a little sketchy at times with IR) then turn it on, select the number of the program and press play. How much simpler could you get? Not to mention it had tutorials that showed everything down to animating how to put in the batteries.
"Power" - "Two Motors" vs. "Three motors, redesigned for smoother operation"
-Uh, actually the RCX could power up to three motors too, it just typically came with two.
"Connectors" - "Two-wire analog cables" vs "Six-wire digital cables"
-Well yeah, the more the better, but I'd imagine homebrew stuff is simpler than digital, I've never done any so correct me if I'm wrong
I've always heard about Wired being sketchy about their reporting, grr...
Nevertheless, it seems like a cool device, especially with bluetooth
It is high-grade, precision engineeered plastic. The LEGO robotics sets are made from lots of pieces of various shapes, not just one shape replicated thousands of times. Compare up against some of the LEGO knock-offs that are much cheaper. They hold together when you're building a static building, but if you try to build something that moves, they fall to pieces. You need plastic that fits *exactly* so that gears don't grind against each other and torque doesn't tear the robot apart. Personally, I'm impressed with the price -- it's asking a lot to get this kind of resource down to the point where kids can ever get ahold of it.
In my opinion, it costs too much to sell to more than a small audience. Then there's the problem of it using RJ11 jacks which make it incompatible with current LEGO devices.
The first Mindstorms set was really more of a toy then anything, no real robotic concepts could be created except things that mimicked walking or rolling with some pre-programmed commands. There were too few motors and feedback devices. Also the programming environment was definitely aimed at kids.
Hopefully Lego will realize that adults love this kit too and perhaps even are aiming this new Mindstorms at older people with a more robust programming environment. Reading the press release they are already adding more advanced features to their servos and sensors that suggest they are gearing for a real robotic design. The inclusion of 3rd party support will also be benificial. Even if Lego somes out with robotic programming for dummies software, some other 3rd party developer may come out with an advanced set of software tools.
Also, I am hoping from the product shots that they actually have a decent pre-designed walking robot concept to put together and play with. I am not so mechanically inclined to design my own walking system, and was always frustrated with trying to create something robotic enough to work with, but by having a decent robot design come in the package then you could have fun finding ways to program it and interact with it without having to first figure out how to design it. All I could ever do with the old kit was make rolling or track based vehicles bump into things and reverse.
We have to wait until August though? Why do companies insist on release product information so early in advance. I would have bought this kit today if they announced it yesterday.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If that was the 'mistake of your life' then you need to live more.
Anyone have some information on how much memory this thing will have? I know people could do pretty amazing things with the old RCX (not with Lego's easy to use programming environment, with firmware replacements), but this is several years later and the set is almost the price of a PDA.
Johnny 5 IS ALIVE!!!!!!!!!! Legos are certainly much cooler than when I was a kid...
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Minus the fact that the robot pictured has legs versus tank treads, it's nearly a dead ringer for Number 5 from Short Circuit (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091949/). Well, that and they made him more appealing to the trendy crowd by fashioning his chest to look something like an iPod knock-off.
"When LEGO MINDSTORMS launched, we fundamentally changed the way people viewed LEGO building and play and helped spark the trend of affordable and attainable consumer robotics," says Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO, LEGO Group.
With an expected retail price of $249, I think my $25 Transformer is all the "affordable" robotics I really need.
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
Yeeeesssss, I will have my robotic minions do my bidding and rule the world!!!! Muahaha - Lego Robots! Attack!!!
Don't jump the gun too hard everyone, the images are, I think, 3D renderings and not final products. I want these so badly it hurts.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!
Why is the Canadian suggested retail price 30% higher ($90!) than it should be, after currency conversion? The price in Canadian dollars should be about $40 more, not $130 more!
249.99USD = 290.19CAD, not 379.00CAD
What's up with that?
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Down where? There's no way a kid would buy this set for him/her self, and you could build your own for $250. Lego has severly limited their market, without apparent cause.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
They only get extra sales from replacing lost Lego bricks? Lego is not something you just buy one of and that's it; you can always buy and use more Lego!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
From TFA, Lego are shipping some form of National Instruments Labview. I don't like it myself, but it's certainly a 'grown up' environment.
In case you haven't met it, it's a graphical system for dropping in widgets and connecting all kinds of pipes. It's a bit difficult to follow the control flow, but it makes it vary easy to quickly build some serious control loops. NI have been using it to control their general purpose data acquisition/control cards for years.
We use it in the final year undergrad labs to control all kinds of things, even a basic MRI machine!
I guess I kind of made up my own definition there.
...minus those that have been lost. (and assuming the robotic variety haven't taken over the Earth.)
I consider buying more legos to be normal sales...not extra sales.
Whatever quantity you buy should be the quantity you have 50 years from now...
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Bluetooth mindstorm has been done before, even though not in the easiest way, in mobilerobotics :P
The programming language is LabVIEW from National Instruments. Its a "graphical" building block language. I haven't used it much, and not for several years. Its used mainly to interface with automatic test equipment to write tests for various equipment. I remember it being quite fun, if a little clunky.
You have to remember that LEGO's products have to be accessible to children.
As of today, $US249 is only $CDN289, so why are Canadians expected to pay a 31% premium over the US? The shipping distance is the same. Canadian import duties are typically lower. I don't get it.
now imagine the robot 2 meters tall ... perhaps lego mindstorms should just change the ratio of their products - 8)
No - but as a father to a 7 year old boy, I'm actually the part of the target audience - I can afford to spend the money and have some fun together with my son. For me $249 is not too much - I still have legos from when I was a kid (including working motors, electric train rails and pneumatics), so I consider it a long term investment.
-._''_.-
I hate those rounded technic pieces. They don't fucking fit in with regular technic lego blocks very well. I tried making an engine using the rounded pieces and mounting it on a regular lego truck frame and the whole thing jiggled around way too much because the only way to do the mounts was to pop in those make-your-own-stud pieces and attach it.
For those of us in the US, there may be some degree of concern that these guys could decide the kit is a Threat To National Security or somesuch...
What I found the most interesting was the fact that Lego got the users involved in a completely new way. Instead of treating them like lab rats, they seemed to actually listen and implement the users ideas. The MUPs (Mindstorm User Panelists) didn't get everything they wanted implemented, but it seems like some of the coolest features that will be in this came from them. I hope this product is a huge success, because maybe then some other corporations will look and see that customers not only already pay their salaries, but can help them get bigger ones too.
Lego has warmed to the power of the open source ethos.
It would be nice to see other corporation names at the start of this sentence, oh like Microsoft, Sony, etc...
But somehow I doubt it.
Not at all--if you're in your fifties now. Because of inflation it probably *was* a great deal!
3. Profit!
2. ???
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The new studless design is sleek, i'm just wondering how well all of our old technic pieces will integrate into the new system. In a few of the pictures i've seen a couple of the stardard technic bricks, studs on top, holes in the side, but they weren't playing much of a piece in the band. Also, I hope the all this stylization doesn't cramp the creativity, not that it is likely considering whom they had as consultants on the project.
Well, I can't wait to get one, although i'm not sure where it will fit in my dorm room, come to think of it, i haven't pulled my out my original RCX for that very reason. . . I think my dorm room needs a basement for my lego projects.
Wife got me the first one, and I have not used it in a while, (wanted more parts to build some cool stuff) Maybe if I start using it more then tell her about the new set.
The inclusion of Bluetooth technology also extends possibilities for controlling robots remotely, for example, from a mobile phone or PDA.
If I aam reading this right, it means you will be able to use the Bluetooth controller programmatically.
This opens up a huge range of possibilities, including potentially offloading heafty computations to a bluetooth enabled PC. In combination with the ultrasonic sensor and audio sensor, you could make some *really* sophisticated stuff, in theory!
My wife finally came through and bought me an RIS 2.0 kit for Christmas...as punishment, Lego obsoletes it the moment I open it...bugger...
Dave
Quite funny, if you consider it's about LEGO blocks.
I'll try to dispel some myths here without stepping on the toes of my former employer, National Instruments, which is working with LEGO on the software interface and programming environment for this product. I designed and built the compiler infrastructure (excepting the parser) for targeting the virtual machine running on the brick from a program built in the Mindstorms NXT software environment, so I speak with some authority (and little fear of reprisal as long as I stay within reasonable limits in discussing as-of-yet unpublished details :)).
:) I'm at Intel now, focusing more closely on the types of performance analysis on which I am so keen, but NI continues to do amazing work, both for its customers and the community.
If anything, this product is designed to be more extensible than ever. They *want* third party providers to create new hardware and augment the software environment to support it. We built the brick's virtual machine with the understanding that the prior one was extremely limited for C-style programming languages that operate with a stack and a flat memory space. It is still more oriented with the highly parallel nature of the dataflow programming language kids will use, but this should only make things more interesting for the C/compiler hackers and enthusiasts out there.
Finally, the entire compiler was written in LabVIEW itself, which is the dataflow programming language that the Mindstorms NXT programming environment is based on. The LabVIEW-based compiler can parse, analyze, optimize and generate code for other LabVIEW programs, so theoretically the programming environment provided by the product is all the enthusiast or third party needs to extend the product with new functionality. In reality, much of the API used by the compiler won't be initially available to everyone, mostly because that's not what the product is really about -- but this is mostly a matter of time and resources since they're on an aggressive schedule, and it's only a matter of time before they provide an SDK.
They want this product to be accessible, and have nothing to lose by doing so. Fortunately this time however the underlying technology was designed to make this even easier after the product launches.
One last request to NI is something that we discussed while I still worked there... Since NI is not ultimately a compiler company, I'd love to see the compiler open-sourced for anyone with access to LabVIEW or Mindstorms NXT. How 'bout it Joel? I've still got some G in me.
-Robert Morton
p.s. I left NI on very good terms, and I hope I didn't just undo that
I designed the compiler for the Mindstorms NXT (not counting the parser), so your statement strikes me as odd... because the entire compiler was written in LabVIEW itself. Given that the Mindstorms NXT is a product, that would make it a production programming language, would it not? The compiler does significant dataflow analysis, constant propagation, dead code elimination, register allocation, and identifies opportunities for parallelism, just for starters.
c id=14402793
:)
Regarding your other point - I find that most people are much more comfortable with visual concepts and cues than they are with words, excepting those who are CLI gurus. True, LabVIEW's collection of palettes and tools has been confusing, even for adults - this is why they've redesigned the palette system in LabVIEW 8.0; but they *completely* redesigned the entire concept of palettes for Mindstorms NXT. When you start seeing demos of the software you'll quite simply be blown away.
See my other post here as well for more info about the product:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173049&
Note, I left NI shortly after I completed the majority of my work on this project, so I feel I can (and should!) defend our hard work without fear of reprisals from management
-Robert Morton
Not enough I/O ports!
On the NXT, if you look closely, you are still limited to three motor outputs (that fourth port on the controller at the "top" is for USB). As for inputs, there still seems to be a limit of 3 general purpose inputs, plus one extra "special" ultrasonic input (it is strange - they mark the other inputs on the controller brick, but leave the ultrasonic unmarked - I have to assume that it is meant for the ultrasonic sensor only).
What if you want to hook up more sensors, or more motors? What if you want to hook up old sensors and motors, how do you do that? From what it appears, you can't - you can only hook up the same number of motors and sensors as the old RIS (minus the special ultrasonic sensor).
This is what makes me wonder whether Lego is paying attention at all to the market they created. For anyone who has perused the websites of Lego RIS creators, they will quickly learn that there are a few things that these people want: more motor outputs and more sensor inputs (witness the number of people creating numerous schemes to allow multiplexing of the I/O space), a greater variety of sensor types (witness the number of people making and selling custom sensors), and an easy/efficient way to network the controller bricks.
I will go further to say that there are many people who would love to see more than just motors - I know of some builders who have taken miniature pneumatic solenoid switches and converted them to allow them to control Lego pneumatics. How about a real Lego pneumatic pump (instead of having to build one from parts - although there are a ton of ingenious designs)? How about a Lego linear actuator (I have seen people build these too from Lego mini-motors and worm gears)? Why not a Lego stepper motor?
Furthermore, all of this could have been built into the same four-stud plate electrical connector - even the new motors with their in-built rotation sensors could have used this (two wires for power, one or two for the sensor). You would have to maybe round/notch the corner of the plate to indicate "pin 1" (like an IC chip), and you would need to add some additional protection (maybe diodes or something) for n00bi3s who connect the lines wrong, but it could be done. Standardize the motor output pins on the place (and sensor input pins) to be the same as current motors and sensor hookups. If done right, all the old stuff could work with this system, and new parts, like the new motors and sensors, could be added as well. Or, go with the current RJ jacks, and add dongles to connect old sensors/motors (maybe they will do this - I can assure you if they don't, someone else will).
Ultimately, at the minimum, they really need more I/O jacks for more motors and sensors, and a way to easily network the controller bricks. Perhaps the USB port will facilitate the networking of the controllers (?) - we won't know until people start playing with them. If Lego was smart, they would release a "super-controller" that had more I/O for those who want it and need it. It seems strange that the original Lego controllers developed at MIT had way more I/O capability than this new controller. There is no valid excuse, unless they just want to avoid confusion (which I can't understand, because they don't seem to understand that young kids are not really their target market for Mindstorms).
For myself, I am finding that if I want to do any kind of real development of robotics, it is just best to stick to breadboards, a soldering iron, PIC controllers and/or BASIC Stamps, hobby R/C se
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I like the new rcx. I like the new sensor selection, but I can help but wonder about the form factor of the sensors. The old sensors were basically a 2x4 brick with a 2x4 plate attached. These look huge. with no studs, just a few technic sides. I kind of wonder about that. I'd hate to have great rcx and these great sensors, but no way to integrate the sensors in an appealing way.
Will the Java trick still work?
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
It's got Bluetooth, and they say it will be controllable from a host machine, be it a computer, a PDA, or a mobile phone. What more could you ask for? ...or maybe a beer holder!
Fire! Laser Beams!
Two RCX bricks can communicate with each other using the IR ports. I don't have a second one, but the books I have all rave about how much more interesting it gets when you have two RCX bricks controlling your robot.
If the NXT can control an RCX, then I can reuse my existing motors and sensors with a bit more complexity. Complexity = fun in this context.
I realise the NXT doesn't use studded lego pieces directly, but there's obviously some way to integrate it with studded pieces, so I don't think there will be structural problems to overcome.
I also have a meccano set with motor, and at some point I want to make some robots which combine the two technologies...
I want to teach the kids on my team better version control practices (Lord knows we need it!) and I find that easier with text programs rather than binary files as the kids can better understand the value of revision comments when they can use some visual diff tool to examine the old file versus the new one they are about to check in.
Or, is there any good way with RoboLab (and the NXT compiler) to diff the files?
Also, how does the NXT compiler compare to RoboLab?
Thanks!
Dave
What, you were right :P
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I'm by no means the expert on some of your questions, but I'll try to help you out as best as I can.
:)
There is not currently a text format for LabVIEW programs, but your concern about version control has existed in the professional LabVIEW users community for quite some time. The core LabVIEW product has an excellent graphical Diff tool and integrates with standard source code control providers such as Perforce for version control. I don't recall seeing this in Robolab, but I could be mistaken (I was never a power user). I am also not certain how the software for Mindstorms NXT will handle this, though I imagine that it will be more of a concern in an academic package if one is released separately.
The Robolab compiler was quite clever, and was essentially built right into the blocks that kids drop in Robolab. When you "run" a program in Robolab, the blocks execute and save state information into global variables, in addition to emitting low-level bytecodes as they go along. When the end of the program has finished "running", all of the code and state that was collected is packaged together and downloaded to the brick. The downside to this single-pass approach was that no analysis could be done on the program for optimizations or even transformations like register allocations. Basically the kids had to be their own register allocators, choosing from colored "containers" to keep track of different variables.
The Mindstorms NXT compiler is a more traditional multi-pass, optimizing compiler. No containers are required, and instead the variables are inferred from the wires that carry data between two blocks. Unlike Robolab, where parallelism was explicitly managed with task splits and joins, all of the parallelism in Mindstorms NXT is inferred from the inherent parallelism that exists in a dataflow program. I'm not sure how much more detail I should delve into, so I'll leave things at that for now
-Robert
Ohohoho... Aker the wondercat is going to have to fight the terminator!
heheheheheheheh!
he's already looking at me with suspicion...
and he thought robosapien was bad...
NQC is great, but for those Java enthusiasts out there, take a peek at a micro implementation of Java called LeJOS (http://lejos.sourceforge.net./ It's got a great set of APIs, including some nice implemenations of classic Robotics design patterns such as Behaviors, BehaviorListeners, Arbitrators, etc... Very versatile.
(one of my first real Lego kits was the Expert Builder crane - can't remember the number right now)
- 1
This'un?
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?S=855
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/8480
megawha?
Looks sweet, might get into it when it comes out (was recently thinking about gettings into mindstorm but it looked too clunky) They should add an accelerometer (can they be made cheaply?), and hydraulics (fluid hydraulics, not the air ones that technics had).
Its Zorak!
Women- the final frontier...
Shut me down. Machines building machines. How pervert. (that's was only starwars) Now we got now something more evil; kids building machines Getting a bit affraid now any kid can built his own reproducing lego bots... Will there still be a future for mankind or will the darkside of LEGO rule over mankind ? :)
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
So what if they rarely break? There's plenty of stuff that rarely breaks that is sold on a low profit margin. Take plates/silverware, for instance. I know at my house, we've been using the same stuff for 15 years. That industry seems to still be around, though. What about coathangers? You'll rarely find those on my need-to-buy list (Hell, I wouldn't even know where to look to get some if I needed to), but they are still sold cheaply. Lego is throwing all of its money at licenses to sell less of a more expensive product. If they would just stick to their roots and design unique creations with new or even "classic" themes (Forest, Space) and package them largely with blocks that are easier (read: less expensive) to make, you drastically reduce overhead. With the robotics stuff, though, you're going to have to factor in the cost of developing the hardware, software, etc. Sure, it may only cost $20 to produce a unit, but when you've been paying a team of, say, a dozen engineers $60,000 a year for, say, two years ('tis likely the design underwent many changes in its lifetime), all of a sudden you need to make a million dollars off of this thing. At $200, you start turning a profit (not including marketing, managers' pay, shipping, etc.) at around unit 5000. How many of these things are they going to sell? Probably closer to 50,000, but with Lego facing a grim financial situation, they can't afford to have this one flop.
Almost every home has hangers.
Both plates and hangers are far more likely to break than legos.
The initial cost of a set of plates/silverware is higher than a basic lego set.
(I was never talking about the Mindstorms stuff as the OP said, "it's just plastic, right?")
Hangers aren't any cheaper either.
Lego still makes blocks that have nothing to do with robotics...and they aren't that expensive.
For the OP's "1000$ to get a decent set of basic blocks", he could buy about 50 buckets of 800 piece sets at Target.
Do you think 40,000 pieces is required for a "decent set of basic blocks"?
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Does it run BrickOS?
in true Lego style will cost $249
That isn't bad considering that the current robotics set is $200 and isn't nearly as cool.
Not only didn't I read TFA, I can't be bothered to vist TFWebsite.
Having worked with a school using the Mindstorms, there was considerable disppointment that a major glitch in a plan to use Terminal Services to centralize software offerings and reduce costs was that ther was no way to communicate from the application running under T/S to the box. Even a "sneaker net" approach with a USB stick would work.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Here's a video: http://botmag.com/video/01-06_lego_mindstorms.wmv
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