Robotics Monday: We Are Now Obsolete

Name of Model: MakerLegoBot: A Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer

Created by: Will Gorman of BattleBricks.com

Found at: http://www.battlebricks.com/makerlegobot/

Details: The day has finally come. A LEGO robot is now capable of assembling a variety of LEGO models on its own, working off of LDRAW instructions generated in MLCAD. Would you like a robot like this? You can download instructions and programs for it in a number of formats, including MLCAD. That MLCAD file will be handy when a later version of this robot needs to know how to make other robots. For now, though, this robot is limited to various 2xX sized bricks - 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, 2x4, and 2x8. This limits it to fairly simple models, but the concept has been proven. Actually, the concept, in a way, had already been proven by the robots that this LEGO 'bot was inspired by. MakerBot and RepRap can print any shape three-dimensional shape using extruded plastic. The plastic? It's frequently a type of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) - the same sort of plastic used to make LEGO bricks (naturally, LEGO uses a variation on the ABS formula that is kept fairly secret). We already knew that the possibilities were endless, this was just the variation on this sort of robot that we all wanted to see. ...and speaking of which, if you want to see this in person (without building your own or a robot that can build one for you), you can see it at LEGO WORLD 2010 in Zwolle, The Netherlands, from October 22nd to October 26th, 2010. via Make

Apologies for the late posts the past few days - I've been feeling very sick and having a hard time focusing. Things should be back to regular speed for the rest of the week, although I'm still pretty stuffy.