Book Image

Smart Robotics with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor

By : Aaron Maurer
Book Image

Smart Robotics with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor

By: Aaron Maurer

Overview of this book

LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor is the latest addition to the LEGO MINDSTORMS theme. It features unique designs that you can use to build robots, and also enable you to perform activities using the robot inventor application. You'll begin by exploring the history of LEGO MINDSTORMS, and then delve into various elements of the Inventor kit. Moving on, you'll start working on different projects which will prepare you to build a variety of smart robots. The first robotic project involves designing a claw to grab objects, and helps you to explore how a smart robot is used in everyday life and in industry. The second project revolves around building a working guitar that can be played and modified to meet the needs of the user. As you advance, you'll explore the concept of biomimicry as you discover how to build a scorpion robot. In addition to this, you'll also work on a classic robotic challenge by building a sumobot. Throughout the book, you'll come across a variety of projects that will provide you with hands-on experience in building creative robots, such as building a Dragster, Egg Decorator, and Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants. By the end of this LEGO book, you'll have got to grips with the concepts behind building a robot, and also found creative ways to integrate them using the application based on your creative insights and ideas.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Chapter 1: History of Mindstorms

This chapter is going to focus on a very brief and quick history of the LEGO Mindstorms timeline. This chapter serves as information and context for the new Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit 51515. It will provide a backdrop of how we have arrived at this new kit.

It is hard to believe that LEGO has been in the robotics environment for over 20 years. Today the educational and consumer world is saturated with robots. We see them everywhere, from toys to day-to-day life products, and all over the industrial and economic world.

Back in 1998, LEGO released Lego Mindstorms: The Robotics Invention System. There were some other products created by LEGO prior to this kit, but for all intents and purposes, we are going to focus on this first RCX Mindstorms kit, 9719, as the kicking-off point for our quick journey through the robotic systems over time. 

The reason we are going to do a quick dive into the incredible history of LEGO Mindstorms is to...