The first LEGO robotic brain brick was introduced in 1998, the RCX.
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| LEGO MINDSTORMS RCX from the original LEGO Robotics Invention System user guide (Robotics, 1998) |
The RCX had two motors, two touch sensors, and a single color sensor. Programming was completed through the LEGO RCX code, which was a very limited, but good way to introduce programming to people with very little or no programming experience. Of course, for the more seasoned developers, there were, and still are, ways to flash the operating system to use conventional programming languages, the most popular being NQC, or Not Quite C (Knudsen, 1999).
The second LEGO brain brick was the NXT, released in 2006, with the NXT 2.0 released in 2009.
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| My LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT with the leJOS firmware |
The NXT had Bluetooth connectivity, a color sensor, a touch sensor, a sound sensor, an ultrasonic sensor that detects objects, measures distance, and detects movement, and three servo motors. Aside from a few different construction pieces, the NXT 2.0 did not include the sound sensor, but did have a second touch sensor.
Native programming for the NXT and NXT 2.0 was an intuitive drag-and-drop GUI tool that allowed for easy development. I found this to be a little limiting with what I wanted to create, so I used the leJOS firmware that allowed for development using the Java programming language.
The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 was released in 2013.
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| LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, image from the LEGO website |
EV3 has a color sensor, a touch sensor, a remote control, an infrared sensor, two large servo motors, and one medium motor. It also has the nice and easy to use GUI programming tool. Like its predecessors, there are many different options that allow for development using popular programming languages like Python, Java, and C.
In conclusion, the LEGO MINDSTORMS product line has had great longevity over its three incarnations and with no signs of stopping. I am looking forward to the fourth version of the brain brick, but there is no indication of the EV3 being discontinued any time soon.
If you are interested in understanding programming and like to work with LEGOs, then the MINDSTORMS product is well worth the money and time you invest in it. LEGO MINDSTORMS are one of the most successful ways to encourage you and your students to create in a safe environment that promotes science, technology, engineering, and mathematics!
References
31313 MINDSTORMS EV3. (n.d.). LEGO. Retrieved from https://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/products/mindstorms-ev3-31313
History of LEGO robots (n.d.). LEGO. Retrieved from https://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/history
Knudsen, J.B. (1999). The unofficial guide to LEGO MINDSTORMS Robots. O’Reilly, Sebastopol, CA.
LEGO MINDSTORMS user guide (2006). LEGO.
LEGO MINDSTORMS user guide (2009). LEGO.
Robotics Invention System (1998). LEGO.
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