Lego bricks are getting cozy with the iPhone and other Apple devices in the latest incarnation of the Mindstorms robotics kit.
Lego
is set to announce Monday that a new, $350 Mindstorms EV3 kit will have
the ability to talk to iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches through
Bluetooth wireless connections. That means Lego builders can use the
devices as remote controls for their robots, or create simple programs
that are then sent to the robots to control their actions.
Lego
said the kit will go on sale in the second half of the year. It was
announced as the International CES gadget show begins in Las Vegas this
week.
Remote control was already possible with Android smartphones
and the most recent Mindstorms kit, the NXT. Apple devices didn't work
because the "brain" of the kit - a juice-box-sized electronic brick -
lacked a chip that would identify the Lego gadget to Apple devices.
Also
new in the Mindstorms EV3 kit is a "two-eyed" infrared sensor that can
pick up signals from a small infrared remote and locate it. In the kit,
Lego includes the blueprints for a snake robot that uses its eyes to
sense if someone is close to its head, in which case it strikes.
The
EV3 will also be the first Mindstorms kit to be available in Chinese,
Korean, Spanish and Russian. Previous kits have been in English,
Japanese and a few other European languages.
As with earlier kits,
the EV3 includes four motors and five different sensors. The new brick
is compatible with earlier sensors and motors and is "more hackable than
ever," according to Lego. The first Mindstorms came out in 1998.
Suggested age for the EV3 is 10 and up.
In pics: Best of CES 2013