Engineering Students Can Now Express Their Creativity With Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics

Lego has been an important part of children's lives from all over the world really since the mid 1900's when the toys were changed from wood to the plastic variety. These attachable plastic bricks have predominantly been the most popular building toys for children (amongst a few others). They provide great fun to our children, but more importantly, it is a fact that many experts agree they help children's intellectual development extensively. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are utilized to generate an end-result existing only in the child's own imagination. In the not-too-distant past, children began to turn away from these physically interactive and mentally demanding toys, because of the lack of mystery from an inanimate object, and focused the majority of their childhood on video and computer games. Games such as these can effectively be an important part of a child's intellectual growth, but it is more-so believed they promote laziness and absence of mental stimulation. Some argue they promote violence and obscene behavior not expected from children, but no evidence exists to prove this. Lego came up with the brilliant plan to marry the unparalleled entertainment of video games and computers with the original style building bricks our children of generation X and generation Y had been so familiar with. Lego Minstorms NXT Robots was thus born, and this ingenious new product undeniably exceeded expectations by many. Lego had really upped the ante with their Mindstorms robotics toys for teens and pre-teens when they released this all-encompassing critical thinking platform. Lego seems to have adapted their marketing strategy originally aimed at young children who restlessly required arranging blocks into a myriad of different projects. NXT Robots are thus a welcoming change. Lego Mindstorms NXT Robots revolutionized the toy industry as it was now geared towards entertaining kids as well as serving eager engineering and technical minds in terms of education. Schools all over the world have incorporated the Lego Mindstorms NXT Robots platforms into educating students on mechanical engineering, computer science, and control systems with sensory feedback. Children who are mechanically inclined can now freely express themselves and advance their imaginative creativity, and engineering students around the globe have a fun and simple way to delve into entry-level robotics systems. Click here to visit the NXT Robots website. The release date of the new Lego Mindstorms 3.0 has not been officially announced yet by Lego, but NXT Robots 3.0 should be coming out, and I would definitely keep checking out http://nxtrobots.org for the official release date. Another more advanced robotics development platform is the Italian Arduino Microcontroller that is available for people who want to build some really cool and custom projects. This microcontroller is a bit more advanced and requires knowledge of C programming and electrical engineering.