This creepy little monster walks in any direction on its six legs, and it is featured in Chapter 9 of the Discovery Book. Be sure to check out the OmniStrider as well. This video by one of my readers shows the Strider in action. Building and Programming this Robot Instructions for building and programming this...

SmartBot is a small development platform that essentially consists of just an NXT with several motors and sensors. But because of its variety of connected sensors and motors (and because of the NXT screen orientation), it’s a handy little platform to experiment with new programming techniques. SmartBot is presented in Chapter 10 of the Discovery...

This robotic turret is described in Chapter 8 of the Discovery Book. It is used to illustrate the concept of how sensors can be used on autonomous robots. In one configuration, Shot-Roller rolls around while looking for objects to fire zamor spheres at. In another program, the robot can be remote controlled with Touch Sensors...

The Discovery is a small and sturdy robotic platform that is especially useful to learn the essentials of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT programming with the Discovery Book. The design starts as the ‘Explorer’, a vehicle with no sensors. As the reader progresses in the book, sensors are added while new programming techniques are introduced.

This shy little robot is a 6 legged Mantis that walks around and shows emotions. It’s one of the official LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Bonus models and it appears on the NXT 2.0 package. This page will show you how to build and program your own Manty.

Chapter 9 of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One-Kit Wonders will teach you how to build and program a robot that can find and grab objects. Using the Ultrasonic Sensor, GrabBot spins around looking for the closest object, moves toward it, rescans for a more precise location, then grabs and lifts the object. The unique physical aspect...

These days, we can’t imagine life without cars; in fact, we use them every day and never give them a second thought. Just the same, learning to drive requires a lot of instruction and practice, which might make you wish for a car that parks itself. Some luxury cars today actually have special sensors that...

This robot delivers drinks on command. It was designed for the Design Competition amongst 400 first year students of Mechanical Engineering at Delft University of technology. The goal was to deliver the drinks as quickly as possible, while keeping them balanced, providing an interesting challenge to put the newly learned skills to practice.

Featuring the Rotacaster Omniwheels for NXT, this is the the Omnistrider, based on the Strider in my book. Contrary to most omniwheeled NXT robots, this one has an unconventional wheel orientation. The result is that it can’t turn by itself, but that’s not really a problem since it can go in any direction.

This robotic crane was my first robot arm that was actually quite functional. It could move anywhere on its treads, and the arm had several degrees of freedom, including a wrist that turns. Orginally, I designed this with the RCX (that’s why there are no NXT motors on board), which controlled Power Function receivers with...