Ellie, now 8 yrs, has a facination with all things mechanical. It seemed to be the perfect time to introduce her to Lego Mindstorms.
This set is on loan from her school and Paige has also attended an online session. Ellie liked it so much that she got a set of her own.
This platform let's your child use their natural desire to design and construct while extending the creations by adding intelligence to them. At the center of a Lego Mindstorms creation is a "Brain Brick" which stores commands. As you can see in the video below, these commands can be replayed once or in a loop.
Our first program "m1" tells the robot to move forward then reverse and turn. This loop is repeated.
You can control motors and also read sensors. This program "m2" tells the robot to move until it hears a loud sound like a clap. Then it backs up and chages course
Ellie loves to come up with her own designs. She modified the tail wheel design and mounted the sensors in her own fashion. We followed the instructions for the programs that made the robot move.
This program uses the proximity sensor to detect when an object like a wall or your hand is blocking the path of the robot. If it "sees" something in it's way it will stop and change course.
Let's put some wheels on this thing!
A simple setup to try out the motors and see if it can turn left, right, forward and backwards.
This is what a typical program looks like. No computers are needed for this kind of programming. For more complex actions there is an interface to a computer so that programs and sounds can be downloaded.
Young builder at work
The last creation
Testing the platform.
