Many people have seen clips or shows that are devoted specifically to robotics competitions. Sometimes the robots must perform tasks such as picking up and object and moving it a required distance. Other times the robots are required to simply battle to the death! Whatever the purpose, for anyone who's never built their own robot and programmed such robots to do tasks ranging from the mundane to the dueling to the death, your time has come and you too can finally build a robot. You don't even need to have a degree in engineering from MIT. All you really have to do is know how to play with Legos and follow instructions when you buy Lego Mindstorms NXT.
Many of us remember playing with Lego building blocks as child. Many recall the dozens of different sets ranging from medieval Legos to cowboy Legos to astronaut and alien Legos. You may even have memories of the early robotic Lego sets. In those days, they were quite basic and amounted to what would end up being a remote controlled car. However, those days are long gone and the robotic Lego sets have moved forward. The latest robotic Lego set is the Lego Mindstorms NXT. With a central brick as the brain of each robot, these are far more advanced than any other out of the box, build it yourself robot set.
Much more than simply providing a central motor surrounded by other Lego pieces, the Lego Mindstorms NXT robots have sensors enabling them to perceive touch, sight, and sound. They can differentiate color, distance, and even motion. Since programming as an activity has grown not only in everyday use but in popularity, more and more children and adults of every age have really become interested in the development and creation of their own Lego Mindstorms NXT robots.
The central brick that is the brain of each Lego Mindstorms NXT robot is programmable using Net Byte Code (NBC) and Not eXactly C (NXC) languages. You can connect to the brick through a USB port connection to a home computer or by Bluetooth wireless technology. There are very few robotic kits available to the retail consumer that can provide this level of advanced robot development and intelligence programming. Lego Mindstorms NXT offers four basic robots named Alpha Rex, Spike, RoboArm, and Tribot. Each has their distinct abilities and appearance in correlation to their names. Alpha Rex is a humanoid robot, which looks takes on the shape of a bipedal robotic skeleton. Alpha Rex is the only robot of the set that has two legs which move the robot in the same way that humans move by moving one leg "in front" of the other. This is actually a sophisticated maneuver and the fact that a toy can do this is quite impressive.
Spike, is a robot taking on the form of a scorpion. Crawling around on six legs with a tail that has a touch sensor attached to the end of it, Spike is able to paralyze its prey. Up front, Spike also has two pincers with which he can grab objects and carry them away. RoboArm and Tribot are essentially opposite robots that share one thing in common - they both have sophisticated grabbing claws. RoboArm is a stationary robot, while Tribot moves around with the use of wheels instead of legs like Alpha Rex or Spike. Tribot actually moves quite fast, especially in comparison to any of the other robots who do not have wheels. The Lego Mindstorms NXT robots are not only impressive pieces of hardware out of the box, but they also provide a level of programmability that is honestly not matched by any other retail robotic kit.
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