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Originally intended for use by children at home or in the classroom, Lego Mindstorms has instead enraptured tens of thousands of adults. Engineers, academic researchers, and hobbyists have reverse-engineered its firmware, hacked together new programming environments, and shared recipes for unanticipated ways of connecting it to the outside world.
Mindstorms sets come equipped with motors, sensors, LCDs, and microcontrollers, as well as the popular set of plastic bricks that children have been playing with for years--all of which can be used to fashion computer-controlled or autonomous robots and other gadgets. Among the more unusual inventions described by Contributing Editor Paul Wallich are a toilet bowl scrubber, a Rubic's Cube solver, a lightbulb changer, a CD changer, and a soda dispenser.
The Legos have been so popular that an international community of Mindstorms enthusiasts has evolved, giving rise to such activities as conventions, competitions, and numerous Web sites. All this activity has not gone unnoticed at Lego Co. Although it may have been taken aback by the extent to which Mindstorms has transcended the child's toy category, the company is happy to have the millions of dollars in revenues it brings in. In response, Lego is expanding its range of computer-controlled toys, publishing some of Mindstorms' internal documentation, and enlisting fans as advisors and testers for new versions of the product.
Contacts: Linda Geppert, 212 419 7562, [email protected]; Tekla S. Perry, 650 328 7570, [email protected].
For faxed copies of the complete article ("Mindstorms: Not Just a Kid's Toy" by Paul Wallich, Contributing Editor, IEEE Spectrum, September 2001, pp. 52-57) or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
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