WIRED Tells Development of Mindstorms NXT

Brendan I. Koerner has an excellent article up on WIRED about the development of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit. It's a sneek peek at the February issue of WIRED, that will feature Mindstorms NXT.

The article tells the story of how John Barnes, David Schilling, Steve Hassenplug and Ralph Hempel became company insiders and helped reform Mindstorms into the NXT.

Amazingly enough, when the 4 guys were invited to help out, Søren Lund, the Mindstorms director, told them that LEGO didn't even have a working prototype yet. And now, eleven months later, LEGO announces its arrival at CES 2006. That's an amazing turn-around. And all for no paycheck.

Lund has called this new design paradigm, "Flickr for robots." For example, LEGO is using the ultrasonic sensors designed and built by John Barnes at Hitechnic. "Lund wants every NXT customer to be able to have an effect on how Mindstorms is used and designed."

On LEGO's absolute silence on the subject, the article reads:


LEGO also was firm on some subjects. They refused to include an AC power port or additional motor/sensors ports because of financial reasons. A pitty, but the $250 price-point is very attractive.

So, Is LEGO finally waking up? Is this the beginning of a trend in other companies? And the biggest question of all, will Mindstorms NXT be as huge as Mindstorms 2.0? We'll have to keep waiting.

Tags: [ LEGO | LEGO Mindstorms | robots | WIRED]