History: Mindstorms’ Incubation
Looking at the LEGO Mindstorms Milestones on LEGO.com, you might notice that there wasn’t a lot interesting activities happening at LEGO before 1998. In fact between 1989 and 1998, there was no news:
1980: LEGO Educational Products Department established.
1986: The first-computer controlled LEGO products are released.
1988: Collaboration between the LEGO Group and Massachusetts Institute of Technology begins on development of an “intelligent brick” that will bring LEGO creations to life via computer programming.
1989: Dr. Seymour Papert, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Development Laboratory of Computer Learning becomes “LEGO Professor of Learning Research.”
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January to February 1998: LEGO MINDSTORMS and the Robotics Invention System are unveiled to the public at Toy Fairs in Nürnberg, London and New York.
July 1998: RoboTour™ ’98 launches from the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, kicking-off a two-month, 30-city odyssey across America in search of learning about and seeing everything robotic.
September 1998: The Robotics Invention System is launched simultaneously in the United States and the United Kingdom. Two expansion sets – RoboSports and Extreme Creatures – also are available.
December 1, 1998: Robotics Invention System 1.0 sells out before the Christmas rush.
February 1999: The Robotics Discovery Set™, a derivative of the Robotics Invention System allowing users to program right on the smart brick instead of through the computer, and the Droid Developer Kit™, a pre-programmed, remote controlled constructible robot kit, are unveiled at the International Toy Fair in New York.
September 1999: The Robotics Discovery Set, Ultimate Accessory Set, Droid Developer Kit and the Robotics Invention System 1.5 are released in the United States. The Droid Developer Kit and the Robotics Invention System 1.5 are released in Europe and Asia, and The Robotics Discovery Set and the Robotics Invention System 1.5 are launched in the United Kingdom.
September 1999: RoboTour ‘99™ Europe launches.
February 2000: The Robotics Invention System 2.0, Dark Side Developer Kit™ (a pre-programmed, remote controlled constructible robot), Vision Command System™ (a PC camera expansion kit for the RIS) and Exploration Mars™ (themed robot challenges, building instructions and games for the RIS) expansion set are unveiled at the International Toy Fair in New York.
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Between 1989 and 1998, LEGO wasn’t really into autonomous robots quite yet. There were some semi interesting electronically/computer controlled products, but nothing ground breaking enough to outshine LEGO’s core “plastic blocks”. Around that same period of time in 1987, an MIT student created an interesting class called the Autonomous Robot Design Competition, officially know as the 6.270 class (6 = course number for the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department. 270 = class number). That class was started with students writing “virtual robots” that competes with each other within a simulated world in computer memory (think Matrix for robots). It was soon morphed into a class in which actual autonomous robots compete against each other. To keep the long story short, LEGO, Microsoft, Motorola and whole bunch of other companies eventually became sponsors of the course and LEGO productized the platform into LEGO Mindstorms. For the full history of 6.270, click here for more details. This is the brief incubation history of the LEGO Mindstorms.
The original Mindstorms did ok in the market. Its programming model sucks for most users. Hopefull NXT has that problem fixed! We are looking forward to a real programmable and hackable robot that can do wild things. In my next update, I’ll talk about the interesting people involved in creating the “LEGO Robot Competition”.
Before I end, here’s a picture of my 1993 6.270 RobotKnights Hanes t-shirt that has been worn and washed at least 100 time. On the left of the shirt is the motherboard used back in 1993 (with a Motorola 68HC11 Microcontroller). On the right is a simple Mindstorms robot:
Picture 2: 6.270 mother board front view. The Motorola 86HC11 Microcontroller is hidden below the display. The gold heatsinks on the left are there to handle the motor driver chips:
Picture 3: Back of motherboard:
Picture 4: Back of motherboard, zoomed out:
