Lego Segway!

Chris Anderson
The Long Tail

March 12, 2007

One of the coolest things about the way Lego rolled out its new Mindstorms NXT [ http://mindstorms.lego.com/ ] product line is that the code and APIs are all public, to encourage third party and open source contributions. The basic Lego kit ships with light, sound, touch and ultrasonic sensors, but you can now buy several other senses from third-party NXT accessories suppliers, led by Hitechnic [ http://hitechnic.com/ ]. Color, compass, and acceleration/tilt are already available, and a cool gyro sensor is coming.

Why would you need a gyro sensor? To create a balancing robot, for starters. Check out this cool video of a Lego Segway:

[ Video ]

(Thanks the the NXT Blog [ http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com/2007/03/gyro-working.html ] for the pointer)