Walking Biped

Long-time Blog reader 222Doc has been working on his biped for quite a while now.

This latest version is looking fantastic and has a very natural and fluid feel to it.



--
Damien Kee
www.damienkee.com

Take the LEGO Mindstorms 2011 Survey

Help the LEGO MINDSTORMS team understand more about how you use gadgets and online devices as part of your everyday life. This anonymous survey takes only a couple of minutes, and provides us with valuable information about how young people spend their time, both online and with friends.

Click Here to jump to post on LEGO Mindstorms NEWS site

The 15-question survey is in English only.

Thank you for your help!
The LEGO MINDSTORMS Team

(oh yes and please note: I noticed the submit button is in Danish (oups).. if once you press it you see some text in a foreign language... It means Thanks, you're done :)

New block in the house : RS485 on NXT-G

Reproduced with permission from Xander's blog I'd Rather Be Building Robots

Give it up for my main man Andy Milluzzi who, with some help from John Hansen, created the world’s first NXT-G block that leverages the NXT’s RS485 communication abilities! Well done.
What does that mean?  Well now you can connect two bricks, back-to-back with a cable connected between their S4 ports and communicate at a blinding 921600 bps!  That’s quite a bit faster than regular Bluetooth and without the overhead of those mailboxes.
This opens up a whole new world of possible sensors! One of them being the new Dexter Industries NXTBees. How cool is that?
You can download the block from here: [LINK]. You will need at least version 1.05 of the LEGO NXT firmware to use this.

see original post here 

PS: looks like this could be quite useful for my W.5 project...

NXT 2.0 Lizard

Here's a video that shows one of the robots that appear in the Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Inventor's Guide. This book is an updated version of David J. Perdue's original Inventor's Guide. For this revision, David revised the theory chapters and I've created the new project section. This includes six robot projects, with building instructions, programs and further exploration activities. All activities can be done with just one NXT 2.0 kit.

One of the robots is the Lizard, which also appears on the cover. It's a four legged animal that responds to different color signals. Blue accounts for normal behavior; Red colors will make it aggressive, and Green is food -- listen to what it says after I give a green signal, he's well raised!

LEGO Space Countdown: 2 Days....

Countdown to the next LEGO Space experience!


Two days to go.....

See more here

Martyn

Robot SpongeBob

Yes I know it's not NXT related, but it is still sort of robotics related. This is a fantastic creation of what spongebob squarepants looks like under his soft sponge exterior :)

via The Brothers Brick

--
Damien Kee
www.damienkee.com

... incoming transmission...

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... message begin ...
... solar array 5-2 damage reported ...
... satellite image requested ...
... Lvl 4 Tech dispatch requested ...
... end message...
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The NXT meets Mr. President

Three days ago, there was an entry on "The 1600 Report" blog by CNN that features Barrack Obama, President of the United States, visiting the Intel facilities in Hilsboro, Oregon, and learning from young science students there on their bio-medical LEGO® MINDSTORMS robots.
There's a nice photo on the page of him signing a NXT brick.

LEGO WORLD Copenhagen, DK -- First Movie

New Education Resource Set

The Good News:

There is a new Supplemental Resource Set, available from LEGO
Education. It includes some new parts, which are not available in any other NXT set.

The Bad News:

There is also a new price—$99.95.

LEGO WORLD Copenhagen, DK -- an update

News Flash!!   I'm boarding the plane in a few hours for a trans-Atlantic flight to Denmark as I have decided to join the Mindstorms team on another crazy LEGO filled adventure (some people enjoy the beach for their vacation... I choose LEGO WORLD :)  -- Of course I'm taking my Wall-E4 with me along with my new BRICKBOT and my friend Andreas from the NL will also join me at the Mindstorms kiosk with his NXTWallet (you know that first NXT transformable Wall-e)!!But that's not all!!  My real mission is to help out my LEGO bro Vassilis (NeXTSTORM) who has been invited to present a totally awesome project he has been working on... You will have to stay tuned to see it in action as right now all i can share with you is this BANNER he prepared for the occasion:

Meanwhile here are some videos of the robots that I have managed to wrap-up in t-shirts and stuff in my luggage (security is going to have a blast)





More info on LEGO WORLD CPH 2011 can be found on this post:
http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com/2011/02/legoworld-2011-copenhagen-dk.html
LEGOWORLD Copenhagen will be open to the public form February 17th to 20th,  2011.

Stay tuned for hundred of pictures and my video reports.

LEGO Space Countdown: 17 Days....

Until the next LEGO Space Experience.

Who knows more?

LEGOWORLD 2011 (Copenhagen, DK)

LEGOWORLD Copenhagen will be open for public form 17 till 20 February 2011.
Come and see some MINDSTORMS masterpieces.

LEGO MINDSTORMS - Sumo challenge
Test yourself with the many exciting LEGO MINDSTORMS challenges. You can both control the robots to secure victory, become MINDSTORMS SUMO winner, manage MINDSTORMS Monster chess and many other fun things at the booth.

LEGO MINDSTORMS Movies
Maybe even see your own movie! Experience the LEGO MINDSTORMS movies or YouTube movies on the big NXT with 40 "TV


What else can you see at LEGOWORLD? Well look at this link (EN DK)

Come and visit us at:

Philea Lander at European Parlaiment

Last Wednesday, The LEGO MINDSTORMS Philea lander was present at the European Parliament for a special organized dinner debate about European Space Programs.
The event was co-organized by the Danish ms. Britta Thomsen (MEP).

David Southwood, the European Space Agency’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, said, “No individual European country alone could have achieved a mission like the Huygens probe, which landed on Titan in 2005. If the European Parliament needs evidence that Europe adds value to member states, what we are achieving in space exploration is proof of Europeans working together and providing a vision for the future.”

An interesting outcome was that space programs will lead to unique innovative solutions that trigger everyday live later, a good example is the solar power efficiency that is needed for satellites that travel far form the sun.
The LEGO model was showing that also the new generations will keep their interest in space explorations.

read the full article.

Martyn

Audrey III - Men Eating Plant Video

I finally published the video for the Men Eating Plant. Enjoy!

I remind that building instructions and program are available
for download at http://robotics.benedettelli.com

Fully-functional battle tank

Hello all. I haven’t been around much lately, and here’s why: I have been working on a truly massive NXT project. It is a fully-functional model of a tank (track driving (2 NXT motors), rotating turret (3th NXT motor) with elevating high velocity brick cannon (aimed by laser) (technic motors controlled by Mindsensors’ MTRMX-Nx). It uses an NXT, a lot of homebrew electronics, and a PSP-Nx as remote control (by Mindsensors).

More information and videos coming soon! Stay tuned!

NXT Controlled Nerf gun

Nice use of the NXT to control the angle, height and trigger of a toy Nerf gun. Looks like an extra NXT was need to reload each foam dart. A remote (presumably connected via Bluetooth) allows you to trigger remotely. I also saw a few cool parts I hadn't seen before ie. the curved gear rack.



via Tinkerology

--
Damien Kee
www.damienkee.com

LEGO on the iPad

"Mark" has an excellent overview of how to manage your LEGO building instructions on the iPad. The link is here.

Playing with LEGO robots does pay off

Someone over at Kno (kno.com) has had some experience with Mindstorms! Check this out - a Mindstorms robot built simply to test the screen of a new tablet device. It's called stress testing, and apparently the robot is swiping at the screen (like your finger or a stylus) and seeing how the screen holds up to the abuse. (It's also testing the built-in light sensor on the tablet's screen, but be sure to watch the video so you can see how a non-LEGO part is performing that duty.)

So - play with your NXT! Get really good at it! You may find a job one day where your experience building and programming LEGO robots may be part of your daily duties!

Read more here.