Lego Mindstorms

A series of LegoToy kits including sensors and a programmable controller. Check out http://www.mindstorms.com or the LegoRoboticsWiki for more information. There are tons of OperatingSystems now for the controller, including a JavaVirtualMachine (see http://www.object-arts.com/wiki/html/Lego-Robotics/NewProgrammingSystems.htm) LegoMindstorms is also used by Nasa to recruit space-robot builders: They recently held a contest, where a father-and-son duo built a huge bot with impulse-engine, that can collect pens and other small stuff that are flying around in zero-gravity. It's being tested, I think, on the InternationalSpaceStation??.

Anyone else having fun with R2D2?

SeymourPapert (inventor of LogoLanguage) wrote a book called MindStorms.

IIRC at least some of Papert's work was funded by Lego, and they collaborated on "Mindstorms" branded robotics kits long before the current generation of widely available kits. I think they were only available to educational institutions, though.

There is an Ot2000 session on XP practices using MindStorms (see: http://www.ot2000.org/programme/122_Mackinnon_Tim.htm). We've been having a lot of fun preparing for it - and while there are a lot of parallels between Lego and programming we don't want to overdo it. The point of the session is let people learn in a relaxing way (without getting stressed out about a particular language or programming environment). We're hoping people will come away with new ideas and the courage to apply them back to programming. We think this is a complementary session to that proposed by the ExtremeHour (a session we have also done in London) - except that it's more concrete (whereas the ExtremeHour cover more breadth of the topic). Anyway - think about coming to Ot2000, it's a fun conference. -- TimMackinnon, OliBye, PaulSimmons

When JohnPugh first taught me SmallTalk at CarletonUniversity he asked people to put up their hands if they had already programmed - he then said, you people will have to work a lot harder because you have a lot of preconceived notions (I always felt annoyed about that - but in retrospect he was right). Anyway in practising for the above session it's funny how changing the medium can keep you on your toes. Even being used to practising XP every day - when you do it on the weekend with Lego things can slip - and when we've discussed them afterwards we realise that using Lego improves our understanding of XP. -- TimMackinnon