Trive wrote in about the robochild of a quite unorthodox LEGO/Arduino marriage:

It's a self-balacing robot inspired to the well-known Segway. Its brain is Arduino and that's why it's called "Arduway". Arduino is mounted on a hand-soldered board which connects it to two LEGO NXT motors and an Epson gyroscope.

Aduino Poet, the robot's creator and a student at the Politecnico of Milan, started a library called Arduino2Lego which aims to provide a simple API for the Arduino to talk to standard NXT sensors and motors. Currently, it looks like it only has an interface for motor control, but the project is open source and with any luck, others will chip in and add more features.

Arduino2Lego
Arduway discussion at arduino.cc

Gene Hacker created a 3D printer out of LEGO. It's like a lo-rez reprap that operates in polar coordinates instead of the more familiar cartesian system. This is still very alpha and his demos show some promising 3D blobs of frosting. With that in mind, however, most of the basic functionality of a rapid fabrication system is here. Hacker posted the necessaries to Instructables, so you should be able to replicate his design and put your mind to making it even better.

Build a Polar 3-D Printer from Legos [via BoingBoing]

Hand Andersson's Tilted Twister is a LEGO robot that can solve a scrambled Rubik's Cube in about 6 minutes. I've seen LEGO cube solvers before, but there's something a bit different about this one, which you can see in the video below:

If you didn't catch the difference, this robot is solving the puzzle on its own with no attached PC!

A light sensor is used to scan all six faces of the cube. The robot then calculates a solution for the cube, before executing an average of 60 turns to complete the puzzle.

The robot is built from the parts available in a retail NXT kit—no extra or custom pieces are necessary. You can build one yourself using the LEGO Digital Designer CAD file and NXC source code that are available from Hans' site.

Tilted Twister - a Lego Mindstorms robot that solves Rubik's cube [via Hacked Gadgets]

NXT Mindstorms hacker BlueToothKiwi created a working Wall-E trash collector robot and uploaded build instructions to the NXTLog.

To mark the release of the film, the official web site has a 'Build your own robot' section where you get to choose the looks / behavior / mobility etc.

And of course, if you got a NXT - you dont need to go to a web site to design a virtual robot. You can of course build your own real Wall-e! Well almost!!

BlueToothKiwi's bot may have won an NXTLog building challenge, but there are some other great Wall-e robots on the NXTLog site worth checking out. From the look-and-feel department, Joe Meno's Flickr photos of his bot bear a striking resemblance to Earth's last robot.

Last is this humble little Wall-E, based on the original Mindstorms.

I'm pretty sure I need to build about 10 of these things and scatter them around the office.

Making your own Wall-e with NXT [thanks, Patti]
Instructions on NXTLog
Other Wall-e bots at the LEGO NXTLog
Joe Meno's LEGO Wall-e on Flickr

A paper cup, a sewing needle, and a simple LEGO Mindstorms robot make for a nice little record player. This might be a fun project to work on with the kids this 4th of July weekend. You know they've been wondering about the boxes of vinyl frisbees in the basement. Aside from anything else they might be learning, it's a good opportunity to slip in some information about how music used to be groovy.

NXT Record Player Instructions

Chris Anderson came up with a kid-hackable UAV, the GeoCrawler 2, using an RC aircraft and a Lego NXT:

Features: In GPS mode, unlimited pre-programmed waypoints, with programmable options such as circle and hold. Ability to integrate other sensors, such as ultrasonic, compass, gyros, accelerometers, or barometric pressure (altitude). With optional bluetooth cellphone integration, control via text message, including dynamical-changed GPS waypoints, "come home" and "circle" commands, etc.

Instructions for the GeoCrawler 2 project are available at Chris' DIY Drones site, a growing social network for folks interested in building unmanned arial vehicles.

This is really an underexplored area of amateur robotics, primarily because it's been so cost prohibitive until very recently. I'm excited to see what people come up with over the next year or two. I expect it will be mind-blowing.

GeoCrawler 2 (Lego Autopilot) Instructions - Link
DIY Drones - Link

Not eXactly C (NXC) is a high level language, similar to C, built on top of the NBC compiler. It can also be used to program the NXT brick. NXC is basically NQC for the NXT. If you are just getting started with programming, then graphical environments such as the Mindstorms NXT software or Robolab may be better choices for you. If, however, you're a programmer and you prefer typing a few lines to drag and drop icon programming, then either NBC or NXC may be perfect for you.

• NXC: Not eXactly C - for Mindstorms NXT (as well as NBC)


• NQC: Not Quite C - for the original LEGO Mindstorms