Hobbies And Interests
Coming Up With a Design
What do you want your LEGO Mindstorms robot to do? Do you want to build a car, a robotic arm, or some other type of robot that will fulfill a specific purpose? Before you start building a robot, decide what you want it to do and come up with a basic design. You can get inspiration about what types of robots to build on Lego Mindstorms fan pages, or by looking at the instruction books that are included with the Lego bricks. While you don't have to build something exactly like the examples in the books, they are an excellent place to start and great sources of inspiration.
Building the Robot
When building your Lego Mindstorms robot, feel free to experiment. It's very unlikely that you will damage any components in the Mindstorms set, and experimenting with different designs to see if they work is the best way to learn how to create robots. You don't have to be limited to only the Lego bricks that are included with the Mindstorms set; you also can use bricks from other Lego sets, or use extra boxes of bricks that you can purchase in bulk.
Programming the Robot
It's OK if you have never had any formal programming experience. The Lego Mindstorms set is designed to make it easy to learn how to design simple programs that your robot can carry out. For instance, you could make a car that stops, reverses and turns 90 degrees whenever it hits a wall, all with just a few basics in the Mindstorms programming language. Before you try to write your own program, look at the examples that are provided on the Mindstorms CD and see how they operate with your robot. Try to build simple programs first and work your way up to more complex ones.