-- Main.EmilyFortuna - 12 Mar 2006

About the TexBot

LEGO Mindstorms is a development kit that allows users to build robots out of Legos and program them. A user can build robots out of Legos, and then control them using a special microprocessor and memory unit called an RCX Brick. The RCX Brick interacts with the outside world by attaching sensors and motors to the robot. For more information about the internal components of an RCX Brick, see Kekoa Proudfoot's extensive documentation. There is also a RCX Manual compiled by Ole Caprani that outlines more information about the Hitachi microcontroller used in the RCX Brick. The H8/3292 microprocessor used in the Mindstorms kit comes from the H8/3297 group of microprocessors initially developed by Hitachi, but now managed by Renesas Technologies. Manuals, tools, and technical documentation on the H8/3297 processors can be found on Renesas's website. For a less technical overview of the H8/3292 processor, see the course notes of Prof. Dr. Antônio Augusto Fröhlich of the Labratory for Software/Hardware Integration at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Programs can be developed on a computer and then downloaded to the robot using a USB Infra-red tower (PC and Mac drivers included in kit, Linux driver available here). While the programming language and operating system provided with the Mindstorms kit are fine for simple development, they are fairly limiting for research caliber work. To allow more advanced applications research with the Mindstorms system, many open source alternative operating systems and programming languages have been developed. BrickOS is an open source alternative RCX OS that allows much finer control of the RCX resources. Not Quite C (NQC) is a derivative of the C programming language with special syntax developed specifically for programming robots using Mindstorms. There have been several cross-compilers developed that allow a developer to write programs for a Mindstorm robot on a PC using a more common programing language and then compile them into a program that can be run on the RCX Brick. Cross compilers exist for several different languages including: Cyclone (a safe version of C), Scheme, Lisp, and JAVA. O'Reilly Publishing sells a book concerning Lego Mindstorms programming and provides a companion website of online resources to help begin development. Michael Gasperi, a Lego Mindstorms hobbyist, has several tips and suggestions for custom-made sensors on his website.These sensors are more complicated then those included with the Mindstorms kit, which can lead to several interesting projects, as demonstrated on the personal website of Philippe Hurbain, another Mindstorms hobbyist.