LEGO Mindstorms NXT – A programmable toy robot for computer geeks

I was looking for some gadget gift ideas and prepare a list of best holiday gifts to avoid last minute Christmas gifts issues and stumbled upon a gadget that I found so unique that I immediately added it to my list. It’s Mindstorms NXT, a programmable toy robot for computer geek. If you have a teen at home who is in computers, the Mindstorms NXT will be a nice holiday gift for them. After all, it’s a bestseller item anyway.

Just about the size of an iPod, the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot has a loudspeaker, a LCD, USB cable, software and navigation keys that make up the main part of the kit. The robot has four different sensors – Touch (enables the robot to feel and react), Light (can detect light and color), Sound (enables the robot to react to sound) and Ultrasonic (allows the robot to measure distance and react to movement). The software is loaded on your computer and USB cable is used to download programs to the robot from the computer. The Mindstorms NXT has built-in Bluetooth and if your computer has Bluetooth, you can do away with USB cable to download programs to the robot and even control the robot using your Bluetooth enabled mobile phone and PDAs. You will be surprised to know that you don’t need a computer to program this robot, just use the NXT program submenu to program it. The programming part of this robot is very simple. A simple to operate drag and drop interface using pre-programmed objects that you pull from a palette and snap to objects. That’s all you got to do.

Apart from the main part, this product includes 577 various smaller parts to help you create many robot models out of the robot. Use your imagination to create whatever you want to. See below for some models that can be created using this robot.

The LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot is currently available for $225. In case you are interested, check its latest price. You may also want to check out the complete selection of bestsellers in toys and games.