"Every kid's dream"

Lego Mindstorms NXT

Manufacturer: Lego

System requirements: 256MB RAM, 300MB hard drive, USB port, CD-ROM, Bluetooth (optional), 1024x768 display, Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later (600MHz G3, G4, or G5 CPU) , Windows XP SP2 (800MHz Pentium CPU or equivalent)

Price: $250 (shop for this item)

Steve Hassenplug is sitting in a van with seven other people on the way to a Lego convention in Washington, DC, explaining the limitations of Lego's previous robot-building kit, called Mindstorms. "It was always difficult to build a robot that could drive straight," he says.

The confession prompts othersinfrared communication on the units was sketchy, and it was difficult for advanced builders to incorporate enough motors and sensors to craft something sophisticated. Something adult. Something that could, in short, get chicks (not Steve's words).

The original Mindstorms systems, cool as they may have been at the time, look like children's toys from an 8-bit world. They featured the familiar Lego look and had limited sensor options. The heart of the system, the day-glo RCX, would not have looked out of place in the Yellow Brick Road.

Despite the limitations, hobbyists like Steve have stretched the 1998 technology further than anyone thought possible. Steve himself is especially proud of his own creation, a robot that can play Connect Fourand can win 95 percent of the time. "Whenever I set that up at a show," Steve says, "kids will line up and play it all day."

But Steve isn't riding a van through the Appalachians just so he can demonstrate his Connect Four-playing robot for another group of eager kids. Instead, Steve has been serving as one of Lego's ambassadors for the last few months, crisscrossing the country on the corporate dime to evangelize his new favorite product, a completely overhauled and redesigned Mindstorms kit, with a 32-bit NXT control brick, ultrasonic sensors, a revamped set of pieces, a new piece of visual programming software, and Bluetooth support. "Basically, I've been flown around by Lego to show off some of the things that I've done," he says, "which is like every kid's dream."

Steve's love for the new Mindstorms NXT is infectious enough that we had to take a look at the new system, so we hauled a system into the lab for inspection. Thirty minutes later, surrounded by a scatter of bricks and instruction booklets, a baby ArsBot rolled off the assembly line and into our hearts. We were hooked.

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