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Lego’s licensing of the Disney/Pixar Toy Story franchise has produced something surprisingly awesome in this mashup of two classic toys. $11 from the Lego shop. [via Geekologie]
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LEGO MINDSTORMS hacker Akihiro Uehara built an interface between an AlphaRex and a Wii Balance Board.
User can control the robot’s leg motors speed and direction by changing the vector connecting user’s center of balance and center of the board.
I have designed this application for elementary school kids in a science museum exhibition.
Don’t forget to leave a comment on our Facebook fan page to participate in our Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 giveaway. [Thanks, Akihiro!]
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Build your dream, then make it move! Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 is the latest version of the robotic building set that launched First Lego League and inspired thousands of kids. People have used Mindstorms to make everything from robotic animals to Rubik’s cube solvers.
Today, in association with The Lego Group, we’re giving away a NXT set! All you have to do is leave a comment on our Facebook fan page. Simply find the post on Facebook corresponding to this one, and leave a comment describing a real or theoretical project you’d like to make with the set. We’ll choose a random commenter to get the prize. The contest ends noon PST tomorrow. Good luck, and our thanks to Lego for their generosity!
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Indirect Collaboration is a website exploring the role of crowd-sourced input in the creative process, in anticipation of the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, TX. MAKE contributor Tim Lillis, who does the “Tricks of the Trade: comics in MAKE, is one of the contributors to the site. Here, he talks with Cecilia Weckstrom of The Lego Group about their use of incorporating customer input into their product design process.
Lillis: So, you’re in charge of the Consumer Insight & Experience Innovation function at the LEGO Group. What does that mean?
Weckstrom: I oversee all the work on gathering insights from our 1:1 connections with consumers all over the world and based on this insight and on co-creation with consumers we improve existing LEGO experiences and define new ones of what LEGO could be in the future. We want to be driven by those who love LEGO for what LEGO is and thus, knowing what is important to all these people is important and the only way we can remain sustainably successful as a company.
Lillis: What are some of the successful and unsuccessful ideas generated by this group?
Weckstrom: Mostly in my experience it is not a matter of unsuccessful or not – more about timing. We have a few examples where we were far ahead of the market (LEGO Studios for instance) where the idea was great, but ahead of its time so wasn’t as successful as it could have been had we launched it a little later. Timing is not just in terms of timing in the market-place, it is also about the rest of the company. The successful ideas are ones that become platforms for value creation, and ultimately not just within the company but including the community too.
Q&A with Cecilia Weckstrom of The Lego Group
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Polish Lego builder Paul “Sarial” Kmiec built this fantastic robotic arm using Technic Power Functions elements combined with an external pneumatic compressor!
Just another weekend build – this is basically a late realization of an idea I had back when I was a kid. The goal was to build a model of an entire human arm, with palm included, that would have as much realistic functions as possible while being of more or less accurate size. The look of the arm was considered insignificant.
The most complex part of the arm is obviously the palm with 4 fingers and a thumb. The thumb can be bent and raised/lowered, whereas the remaining 4 fingers have two joints in each of them. The index finger was operated independently, and it was fairly possible to operate every finger individually, except that it would take two times more pneumatic hoses, which were already quite numerous (8 of these was going through the arm). The palm can be theoretically rotated through full 360 degrees, but I never actually tried it for the sake of the hoses in the wrist. The whole arm was heavy and a bending under its weight a bit, but it worked well. I think it was pretty satisfactory for something that was built in just two days.
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This 4×9′ boardroom table was created for Ireland’s Boys and Girls advertising agency by fellow Dubliners agbc architects. It is, essentially, a 7-stud thick slab of random Lego bricks topped with a piece of tempered glass. More details and photos are available here. A timelapse video of its construction, (inevitably set to the not-so-soothing sounds of the William Tell Overture), is available on YouTube. [via Dude Craft]
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And not in a good way. I have blogged about scary Lego before, but the capacity of the AFOL (“Adult Fan of Lego”) community to twist everybody’s favorite happy Danish building toy into Bosch- and/or Giger-esque abominations has pushed darker boundaries since then. This godawful* thing by prolific and talented builder Mike Foy is just called “The Void,” and, if I may suggest, belongs on the cover of some trendy modern edition of a very old and very evil book full of unspeakable things. [via The Brothers Brick]
*By which I mean: I love it, Mike. Keep it up!
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A few weeks ago in a galaxy far, far away, Rebel Troops and the Empire decided to put down their starships and fight out their epic battle like men, in a foosball game. Or, at least that is what I’m guessing is going on in this impressive Lego Star Wars foosball table by Flickr user 2×4. Said to be playable, the table should allow you to settle any dispute you might have with your mates (epic or not), or at least be a fun leisure activity.
Amazingly, this isn’t the first Lego foosball table that we’ve seen around here, however however it does appear to be the first one to stand on it’s own brick-laden legs. [via technabob]
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I’ve come across numerous Android controlled vehicles in the past, but never a LEGO Mindstorms robot, let alone two. The folks at ENEA in Linköping, Sweden, built a pair as a trade show demo. One of the main challenges was getting Bluetooth support to work. They ended up using an Ubuntu laptop to tunnel between devices. Of interest is the fact that the Android phone controls more than one device. [Thanks, Phil!]
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