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I was at the Game Developers Conference last week. The last session on Sunday
I attended was entitled "LEGO Mindstorms - The Child as Programmer". These
are the notes I took during the session. Lots of interesting stuff there, I
hope you can follow it. (Please forgive spelling mistakes, etc.)
BTW: I asked afterwards if I could post what I heard, and they said it was
okay, though they might deny they said it!
--
David Schilling
LEGO Mindstorms - The Child as Programmer
*Working on RIS 2.0; due Fall 2000*
Picture of RCX brick with a "2.0" on it.
Mindstorm's Mission Statement: "We empower kids to develop new ways of
thinking and expressing their imagination."
Mindstorm usage age breakdown:
36+ 21%
26-35 20%
18-25 11%
11-17 30%
<11 18%
(Data as of 1/19/99) [I think it was '99', anyway]
Contradicting reports that said LEGO was surprised by adult market, LEGO very
much *did* expect a 'shadow market' (that's us AFOLs to you and me) but didn't
quite expect it to be so strong.
Talked about community on website: www.legomindstorms.com
Age breakdown there:
> 18 37%
12-18 42%
< 12 21%
Hall of fame, monthly competitions, etc., etc.
They are quite aware of the Lugnet user community: "They're the hardcore!"
First LEGO League - robot competitions in Jr High and High School.
History of LEGO; Core values of LEGO company
1954: 10 Characteristics of LEGO system of play
1: Unlimited play potential
2: Appeal to both girls and boys
3: Be fun for every age group
4: Offer year round play
5: Healthy and quiet play
6: Offer long hours of play
7: Foster imagination and creativity
8: The more elements, the greater the value
9: Should always be topical
10: Provide quality in every detail
Talked about mindstorms history, Seymore Pappert, MIT, etc.
Tethered system first; then barcode system, now RCX, etc.
Demo of "Fred the Refrigerator Bot" - especially the programming part of it
-GUI stack and build - something that they are already familiar with, no
chance of syntax errors.
-High ceiling, low threshhold. High ceiling = can do a lot with it; low
threshhold - easy to get into
RCX 2.0
=======
-reduced # of clicks for things, eg: directly insert blocks is now supported
-will support true variables (though they might be limited? talked about 10
globals, plus 9 or 10 locals)
-branches come back together again; nest-able and loop-able
-Access Control Regions - a priority system
- touch sensor has highest priority by default, light sensor next, the rest
follow, but all these priorities can be changed
_Newest_ thing is "Big Blocks":
-not equal to black box, you can see what is inside, and modify by copying
to 'my block'
-encapsulalte many smaller blocks to give a more predictable behaviour or
result
_Best_ thing is a "Scripting language":
-in addition to the GUI environment
-the programs are written in text editor
-can be exchanged back and forth between GUI
-allows programs to be easily posted on web, etc.
-Release Sept 15 in Europe. No North American date mentioned
-RCX 2.0 code is written in a much more portable way, a Mac port would be much
easier, though they still don't know if they'll do it
Also coming out soon, Vision Command system:
-LEGO camera with studs on it
-master-slave system, the PC is in control
-can define different grids, each region is equal to a sensor
-each region can detect either motion, or light, or colour
-unfortunately *can't* do complex conditions on these regions eg. (region
1==motion && (region 2==light || region 3==red))
-mentioned 'a region having a certain percentage of red', though they found
out how difficult this is to do, many things the camera sees as red aren't
necessarily red to human
-camera can take stills or video (and seems like theres a possibility of
playing sounds? mentioned 'it' saying "Get out of my room" when robot detects
motion)
-14 ft USB cable
-probably/hopefully in about two years will have a wireless version
-Talked about how Micro scout is programmable via a VLL (which was refered to
as both 'Visible' and 'Virtual' Light Link) - 15 commands plus ability to call
built in routines
-Scout can be programmed with LEGO Assembler; SDK available now, but something
else will be on website in about a week (sorry I lost focus for a moment
there, don't know what)
Q&A and a few sets were given away
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | RE: Game Developer Conference
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| (...) Interesting stuff, David. Can you tell us who the speaker was :-) Cheers, Ralph Hempel - P.Eng ---...--- The train stops at the train station, The bus stops at the bus station, So why am I sitting at a work station? ---...--- Reply to: rhempel (...) (25 years ago, 15-Mar-00, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.general)
| | | RE: Game Developer Conference
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| (...) Did they imply that they actually had a "scripting language" or are they just talking about assembler here? Cheers, Ralph Hempel - P.Eng ---...--- Check out pbFORTH for LEGO Mindstorms at: (URL) ---...--- Reply to: rhempel at bmts dot com (...) (25 years ago, 15-Mar-00, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.general)
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