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LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: Robotics Beyond Building (continued)
An unofficial blog, The NXT STEP (see http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com), has numerous contributors that frequently post information about anything and everything related to the NXT set. Still another unofficial blog, nxtasy.org (at http://nxtasy.org), offers extensive forums and a repository of building, programming, and other resources.
LUGNET (LEGO Users Group Network) at http://www.lugnet.com is a "global community of LEGO enthusiasts." Although LUGNET is not specifically for the NXT set, it offers a number of resources and related forums that are helpful. In short, the Internet harbors incredible communities and resources for the NXT set, and visiting any of the sites mentioned here are great starting points.
Competitions
Finally, competitions or "challenges" are a popular MINDSTORMS activity and can take many forms: racing, line-following, maze-solving, weight-lifting, object-finding, and much more.
Some of the most well-known competitions are hosted by the official MINDSTORMS Web site; an example is their recently concluded robotic sumo competition. In this contest, the official rules asked NXT fans to create "sumo-bots" that could push each other off an arena. Over one-hundred people from nineteen countries took up the challenge, submitting pictures, programs, LDD files, and other information about their sumo-bots to a section of the MINDSTORMS Web site known as NXTLOG.
Judges selected sumo-bots from among the entries, rebuilt them, and then held a robotic sumo contest. The results? Visit http://mindstorms.lego.com/specialevent/default.aspx to find out.
The nxtasy.org blog also hosts "challenges" in which anyone can participate by submitting video and other information about their entry (robot). We might define such contests or competitions as "virtual competitions" because no one actually meets face-to-face. However, actual gatherings for competitions are quite common, especially among LEGO user groups.
A handy feature of the LUGNET Web site, LUGMap (see http://www.lugnet.com/map), lists LEGO users groups around the world.
Conclusion
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is so much more than building. As we've seen here, it's also about programming, CAD, online communities, and competitions -- for starters. I hope you've gained a new appreciation for the NXT set and will consider experimenting with all it has to offer. In the end, this is one robotic revolution that I'm glad to support.
David J. Perdue bought his first MINDSTORMS set in 2001 and has since written Competitive MINDSTORMS (Apress, 2004) and The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor's Guide (No Starch Press, 2007). He is currently a full-time college student majoring in Management Information Systems, and he maintains his Web site at http://www.davidjperdue.com and blog at http://www.nxtblog.davidjperdue.com.
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