Building robots is extremely fun and fascinating. And there are so many ways to do it at home, including kits with discrete components and of course the Lego Mindstorms product line. But there's never been a system as dead simple as this.

Cubelets are self-contained robots that perform a specific function. They magnetically connect with other cubes to communicate and perform more complex functions. You don't program them so much as you connect them in specific ways to perform specific tasks. Building a robot that scoots across the floor towards light sources requires attaching various action blocks to the right sense blocks to build the right fully functional robot.

A pre-production run of 100 kits has already sold out and more kits are coming. They're pricey at $300 for the basic kit, but you get the following blocks:

Action Blocks: 2 Drive, 1 Rotate, 1 Speaker, 1 Flashlight, 1 Bar Graph

Sense Blocks: 1 Knob, 1 Brightness, 2 Distance, 1 Temperature

Think/Utility Blocks: 2 Inverse, 1 Minimum, 1 Maximum, 1 Battery, 2 Passive, 2 Blocker

Still not convinced on how awesome these things will be? Check out this preview video from the company, Modular Robotics.

Cubelets Engineering Prototypes from eric schweikardt on Vimeo.

(via Core77)