What Are Lego Mindstorms All About?

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Many toys and games for children come bundled with a sticker that claims they are educational. It's a term that's banded about quite loosely in the modern world. In reality, most toys today have very little educational value.

But the Lego Mindstorms kits are definitely not to be confused with anything else. Here's something from a toy company which has serious applications and uses for education.

Used in colleges, schools and Universities, Lego Mindstorms is a large lego kit (boasting over 700 parts!) which is used to build robots. But we're not just talking about the kinds of robots that

everyone made from their lego kits when they were kids. With Mindstorms you can create advanced robotic projects.

The robots you'll be creating will make use of important aspects of robotics such as motor movement, light sensing, touch sensors, trail following, avoiding obstacles and more. Although the kit is very easy to use, it can be combined in an infinite number of ways to create completely new robots.

If you want to build a maze-solving robot, you can do that. If you want to build a sci-fi movie style robot something purely for fun - you can do that. Or how about creating your own sumo robot? Yes, Mindstorms will do that. As for age groups, Mindstorms is suitable for children, high school and college students, and even university level students.

The thinking lego Lego Mindstorms comes with what's called an RCX programmable block. This is the heart and the brain of your robotic inventions. This is the CPU, the central computer which will process information just the way our brains do. If the robot touched something, it's processed in the RCX block. And this CPU is capable of processing over 1000 commands at any time. Pretty amazing stuff!

Working with Mindstorms software One thing that had great appeal to us, and which we think is a really good reason to use this in schools, is that Mindstorms comes with a high quality CD ROM software disk. This serves to talk you through various projects, or 'missions' which will show the user how to build up many kinds of robots. Each mission explores a new feature of robotics.

So Lego Mindstorms can be a lot of things to a lot of different groups of people. At it's simplest level, it's any robot-fanatic's dream come true. And would make an ideal (although slightly costly!) Christmas present for any child. At it's more advanced level, it's a sophisticated building medium for robot builders of any level.

Beginner Robot Kits
This is the place to start if you're new to robot building. You can get some good, low cost kits here which are a lot of fun to build.

Intermediate Robot Kits
Some really good kits here for anyone who has mastered the basics of robot building and wants to explore further. I recommend the Moon Walker 2 kit.

Advanced Robot Kits
So, you're looking for a bit of a challenge? Well you'll find it here. There's a range of kits here including some really good walking robots.