New wheels for your NXT robots!

I received a detailed email from RJ McNamara about a new wheel available for NXT robotics:

The Rotacaster is the only Omni-wheel I'm aware of that will track in a "Killough Platform" like theory suggests, resulting with virtually nil slippage on all household hard floors surface. The "Durometer Type Rollers" in the Omni-wheel exceeded all my expectations by a long way after trying those offered from other manufactures! The "Durometer Type Rollers" work like a sticky compound race tyre on a high performance race vehicle.

Many thanks must go to Mr. Peter McKinnon from Rotacaster for having faith in me to take on the challenges involved with developing what is an Industrial Rotacaster Omni-wheel, into a product suitable for use with Lego Mindstorms & Technics Robots.

The Actual cost of the Lego-Rotacaster Omn-wheels and date of availability is yet to be released. The standard non-Lego R-2048-01 Double 48mm individual Wheel Price is AUD $13.75(including GST). Around USD $12.00 each. Rotacaster hopes to make Omni-wheels for use with other Robotics platforms in the future. Mr. Per McKinnon and the Rotacaster staff are great to deal with and their enthusiasm for this project has amazed me with Peter flying from his base here in Australia to the U.S.A. to oversee the development and tooling up.

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If any of our readers manage to get their hands on a wheel or two, let us know what you think! And many thanks to RJ for emailing about the new item!

MINDSTORMS Retires!

2023 is the 25th Anniversary of the MINDSTORMS brand. For 25 years, MINDSTORMS has educated and inspired a generation of robot builders, both children and adults. Unfortunately, the LEGO Group decided to end the line on December 2022. Many ROBOTMAK3RS have been passionately involved with the development of MINDSTORMS through the MUP and MCP programs. Even with the newest Robot Inventor line, several ROBOTMAK3RS were invited to submit additional bonus models that were included in the official app. Regardless of the retirement of a major LEGO robotics product line, ROBOTMAK3RS continue to MAKE-SHARE-INSPIRE using all LEGO robotics platforms available to us. Here is the official statement from LEGO. Since its launch in September 1998, LEGO MINDSTORMS has been one of the core ‘Build & Code’ experiences in the company’s portfolio, carrying with it significant brand equity and becoming a stand-out experience for the early days of consumer robotics and leading to current Build & Code

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix Part 1

In honor of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we asked ROBOTMAK3RS to combine a LEGO set of their choice with a MINDSTORMS set. Here is what these five ROBOTMAK3RS came up with. MINDSTORMS Chess Assistant by Arvind Seshan Overview: When you are new to chess, it can be a challenge to remember which pieces go where. Now, you can use machine learning and LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor to build a tool to help you learn where all the chess pieces go on the chess board. Sets used: LEGO® Iconic Chess Set (40174) and MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor (51515) Review: I really like how the chess set base can store all the pieces underneath and that the board neatly splits in half for handy storage. The chess pieces themselves are very sturdy and well built. My only criticism is the building of the box itself. It was quite difficult to see what pieces to use and since the entire box is made mostly of thin plates, it took a lot of time and patience. I would have liked the storage area to be sliding dra

Machine Learning Meets MINDSTORMS

Machine Learning Extension LEGO MINDSTORMS announced today a brand new feature that is sure to excite all users. Machine Learning Extension is coming to the software in August 2022. This will allow users to implement new applications that were not possible before. Machine Learning has become exceedingly popular in recent years with applications in all sorts of industries from robotics to financial services to climate change. Now, even the youngest of robot enthusiasts and programmers have access to the world of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Comparing two classes Machine Learning on MINDSTORMS will work with both images and audio. For instance, you could train your model to recognize smiles and frowns on your face and have the emotion displayed on your hub. You could train your model to recognize when a red ball is present or not or identify a particular LEGO element. You can control your robot with audio commands that use your own voice. It is exciting to see what new p

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