Amazon and Lego have unveiled the winners of their Alexa-focused Mindstorms challenge, and they're as clever and oddball as you'd hope. The grand prize winner is Jason Allemann's Game Station, a project that uses Alexa for a five-game console -- you...
This TrotBot was created by Ben Vagle. It is an 8-legged robot built out of LEGO Mindstorms and despite its looks, it uses a walking mechanism inspired by the gait of a galloping horse.
You can see it in action in the videos below. It is fun to watch and it really gets around on a variety of surfaces, uphill, downhill and over obstacles. Even though it has eight legs you can clearly see the equine inspiration in its walk.
It even makes a horse-like clip-clop sound in this clip (clop):
Given its all-terrain agility, I think we can expect to see more robots using this unusual walking gait. Ben goes into more detail about the build process on his website and over at Make.
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With the ever increasing popularity and convenience of payment options such as Apple Pay in today’s economy, consumers are always looking for a better option. Those options are certainly to be on...
In October of 2011, Mike Dobson and David Gilday’s CubeStormer II robot, built from Lego kits and powered by a Samsung Galaxy S2, set the world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube: 5.27 seconds....
It's been a while since we've come across a Lego project that's on par with a certain Pixar hero or the Rubiks solving robots, but Simon Burfield's brick-based motorized wheelchair definitely ranks close. He's cobbled together seven Mindstorm NXT micro-computers (programmed in RobotC), 14 motors, 16 touch sensors and a Technic frame to build a chair capable of carting around 200 pounds of Lego obsessed humanity. As functional as it is, the creator aims to improve the build with wireless control via Android, a task he says should be "very straightforward" over Bluetooth. If you'd like to see the demo in all its noisy glory, check out the video after the break.
In the world of technology, having one of your inventions rendered in Lego form is the equivalent of a musician being parodied by Weird Al -- it's a sign you've truly made it and tribute to your influence. So, we're more than a little surprised to see that it's taken this long for the Turing Machine to be lovingly built from plastic bricks. The heart of this simple logic device is a Lego Mindstorms NXT set, but the soul is in Alan Turing's genius -- a man who was before his time and unjustly persecuted for failing to properly fit into society's molds. Dutch researchers Jeroen van den Bosand and Davy Landman built the device as a tribute to Turing, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this Saturday. If you're in Amsterdam you can see the machine yourself at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica's Turings Erfenis exhibit. Or, you can watch the short explanatory video after the break.
Amazon and Lego have unveiled the winners of their Alexa-focused Mindstorms challenge, and they're as clever and oddball as you'd hope. The grand prize winner is Jason Allemann's Game Station, a project that uses Alexa for a five-game console -- you...
