I probably should have titled this article: "Why I have the coolest job in the world".

The other day, I showed up at the office and my boss said, "Take home this new Lego robot stuff and play with it. Tell us what you think." When I was a kid, Legos were far-and-away the best toy I had. My absolute favorite. Erector sets and the like were up there too, but I was all about the Legos. No surprise I became an engineer all those years later. So when I got to play with build-it-yourself Lego robots as part of my job, I was all over it.

I brought home a half-assembled Lego Mindstorms 8527, which they call "NXT" for short. I immediately took every single piece apart, tossed the instructions aside, and starting putting things together -- just as I had when I was a child. Eventually, I backed down from my rogue tendencies, and started building the robots prescribed by the out-of-the-box instructions. I thought that might be a better way to systematically report back to you, my fellow technology lovers, what I learned and thought.

First impression. LEGO ROBOTS! 'Nuff said!

Okay, real first impression -- not really for kids. The user guide is 50 pages of how the sensors and brain work, before you even get to instructions. Second impression was that these aren't your father's Legos. One of the things I loved about the Legos of my youth is that you had a bunch of blocks to work with. Everything else came from your imagination.

The Mindstorms kits aren't as bad though as other Lego sets I've seen in the recent past -- where all the hard stuff is already "put together" as cool molded plastic pieces. However, this thing is a far cry from just a bunch of blocks. The good news is that it's now all gears and axles, etc. So, I guess it's actually an upgrade. It's even more fun to put stuff together out of gears and joints and axles than out of blocks. The bad news is that there aren't enough of these sets yet, so my childhood tendency to throw all the pieces in a big tub, ditch the directions and just build isn't as realistic as it was with my older stuff. More good news, though, is that the older stuff is in fact compatible with the new stuff. If I want to integrate robot parts into my Death Star Lego set, I can feel free to do so.

How does it work?

With that introduction out of the way, let's get down to the nitty gritty...

The set comes with a programmable "Intelligent Block". It has 4 inputs and 3 outputs, takes a zillion (okay 6) AA batteries, weights almost

a pound, and can connect to your computer either via Bluetooth or USB. It has a number of little demo programs built in, and comes with software you can install on your desktop computer to teach it all kinds of new tricks. There's a graphically-based programming language -- anyone remember the days of "Logo" and the "turtle" we used to play with in the days of the Apple II? -- which lets you build complex movement / action instructions out of basic "move forward", "turn right", "use sensor" kinds of commands. The 4 inputs map to 4 distinct sensor types: touch, sound, light and ultrasonic. The 3 outputs allow you to connect up to three "servos" (also called "actuators", but they're basically just electric motors) to the brain.

So, let’s talk sensors.

Touch

The touch sensor gives your robot a sense of touch (go figure!). You can detect when the sensor is pressed, released or "bumped" (pressed then released). The set even comes with a shiny red ball and claw pieces, so that you teach your robot to pick up the ball. Probably not a major league baseball pitcher in the making just yet, but still cool.

Sound

The sound sensor detects sounds in the form of adjusted decibels (dBA). This is sound pressure in the range of human hearing. The sensor can measure sound pressure levels up to 90 dB (about as loud as a lawnmower). Therefore, you can program the robot to react to sounds by % of this range, where 3-4% is a quiet room and 90-100% is me cutting the grass. The sound sensor demo makes the robot move faster the louder the noise it "hears" is.

Light

Half of the equation for giving the robot a sense of vision. The sensor can distinguish between light and dark, measure the light intensity in a room, and detect the difference between various colored surfaces. The kit comes with a cool fold-out "game board" (for lack of better terminology) with colored squares on it. Built right, a robot could run around and make decisions when it sees those squares. Also I'm sure you too can think of many uses for the bright red ball in this context.

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