Subject:
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Re: Lego colours
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:45:05 GMT
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Original-From:
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steve <(sjbaker1@airmail.)StopSpam(net)>
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Viewed:
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1713 times
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Thomas Chesney wrote:
> There was a show over Christmas in the UK about classic toys and, no surprise,
> Lego was mentioned. James May, the presenter, said that the reason Lego bricks
> were bright yellow, blue and red was that the Lego founder was a pacifist and
> didn't want boys to be building anything that could be seen as military.
I read that too - but there was a discussion about this on the Lego
entry of Wikipedia and it seems that this may just be urban legend.
Consider the VAST number of military parts that Lego makes - there are
Lego guns, rockets, knives, swords, axes, light-sabres...you name it.
There is an entire Lego SERIES ("Castle") which is TOTALLY military
in nature.
So I don't buy that argument. If it was ever true, Lego changed their
minds about it at least 30 years ago.
> Tamaguchi (sorry about the spelling) was also mentioned (NOT as a classic toy).
> Has anyone ever tried making a similar thing (look-after-it-or-it-dies) with
> Mindstorms?
It's a good idea - and it would be very easy to do.
I guess the biggest problem is the RCX's battery life - those Tamagochi
things need to be able to run for weeks. But if you have a Mk.I RCX
with the external power connector, that should be easy.
But I'm thinking more of a 'Furbie' than a Tamagochi.
I've thought before about taking a soft 'plushie' toy and removing all
of it's guts and padding to replace it all with motorized Lego parts.
You'd end up with an animatronic of sorts.
The original Furbie toys are AMAZINGLY simple - there is just one motor
and a bunch of cleverly shaped cams. By driving the motor to one
section of the stack of cams and then moving it back and forth, the
Furbie can move it's ears, open and close it's eyes and it's mouth
and 'dance' up and down...all with one motor.
It has a bunch of sensors - three touch sensors, a light sensor
and a microphone - plus something that tells it when it's being
held upside down.
Then there is a speaker for 'talking' - and that's about it.
I think that something like this would be very do-able.
You're a bit short on sensors (with a single RCX) - but you have
the luxury of THREE motors. So whilst a "Legbie" (you saw the
name here first!) would be somewhat less able to react to it's
environment than Furbie, it ought to be able to have a wider range
of responses. However, I'm sure you could be inventive by doubling
up on switches. (eg If you had the 'being petted' switch and the
'being fed' switch, you could easily rig the machine so that when
you turned it upside-down, it would activate both switches - so
your software could guess what function was going on.
Even if it occasionally made a mistake and thought it was upside-down
when in fact it was being fed and petted at the same time, the
real Furbie's reactions are always a little random - so I doubt
anyone would notice the mistake.
Then there is the matter of software for getting hungry, wanting
attention, needing to sleep, etc. I think that can be suprisingly
simple - but then I'm a programmer, so I tend to underestimate the
difficulty of that stuff for 'muggles'.
When I was thinking of doing this, I was going to take a stuffed
Penguin I have and make that become an Animatronic - then hook it
up to my PC via IR to tell me when I got new mail, etc. Since I
run the Linux operating system on my PC (who's mascot is "Tux the
Penguin"), it would be like the operating system was talking to
me...kinda cute I thought!
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Lego colours
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| Someone posted here about a month ago saying that they didn't really like the Lego colours and would swap all of his for gray bricks given the chance... There was a show over Christmas in the UK about classic toys and, no surprise, Lego was (...) (19 years ago, 13-Jan-06, to lugnet.robotics)
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