Lego Mindstorms
Lego Mindstorms are toys manufactured by the Lego group that are made of robotics or construction blocks that can be programmed which stemmed from the educational toys that had programmable feeler blocks. It is named after a book by Seymour Papert entitled Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. The first Lego Mindstorms version available to the public was produced more than 10 years ago and was commercially promoted as the Robotics Invention System or RIS. The next edition was released only four years ago and it was called Lego Mindstorms NXT. The latest of this line called Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 went out in the market just last year.
The beginning of the hardware and software of the Mindstorms RIS kit can be traced back to the programmable block that was made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. This block used the Brick Logo in its programming. A programming environment based on AgentSheets known as LegoSheets was used for this block and was made by the University of Colorado four years before the first release of Lego Mindstorms. The first Mindstorms RIS kit had one light sensor, two touch sensors, and two motors while both NXT editions have three servomechanism motors and four sensors, one for touch, one for light, one for sound, and one for distance.
Lego Mindstorms can be used to construct an embedded system model that has electromechanical pieces that are controlled by a computer. A lot of embedded systems used in real life may be represented in a smaller scale using these Mindstorms blocks like elevator controllers and robots used for industrial purposes. Aside from that, Lego Mindstorms can also be used as an educational toy. In fact, there is already an educational edition of this line known as Lego Mindstorms for Schools.
