12 March 2008

LEGO NXT robot controlled by the Nokia N95

Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit released by Lego in late July 2006. It replaces the first-generation Lego Mindstorms kit, which was called the Robotics Invention System.

The main component in the kit is a brick-shaped computer called the NXT brick. It can take input from up to four sensors and control up to three motors, via RJ12 cables, very similar to but incompatible with RJ11 phone cords.

The brick has a 100x64 pixel greyscale LCD display and four buttons that can be used to navigate a user interface using hierarchical menus. It also has a speaker and can play sound files at sampling rates up to 16 kHz. Power is supplied by 6 AA (1.5 V each) batteries in the consumer version of the kit and by a Li-Ion rechargeable battery and charger in the educational version.

The most importantly, this main module has support Bluetooth wireless connectivity, to transfer programs to the NXT wirelessly or offer ways to control robots remotely through mobile phones.

Guys from over at have developed the Java application based on the Mobile Processing IDE that allows controlling these cute robots with any S60 phones over the Bluetooth.

That’s not all, there is a video which shows that latest application version is capable to control the NXT robot with the accelerometer of the Nokia N95 simply by tilting your phone, just like the ShakerRacer or Acceleracer controls the car models.

It turned out that this is a very intuitive and natural way of controlling. You do not need any practice as the concept can be understood instantly, so there's nothing that can block your way to fun all you need is the Lego NXT thing ;)

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To get it to work you have to install latest Python version and install application on the same drive as Python. As usually, more info over at our forum section ;o)

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Find more information at
http://nxt-symbian.sourceforge.net/

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