Chapter 1: History of Mindstorms

This chapter is going to focus on a very brief and quick history of the LEGO Mindstorms timeline. This chapter serves as information and context for the new Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit 51515. It will provide a backdrop of how we have arrived at this new kit.

It is hard to believe that LEGO has been in the robotics environment for over 20 years. Today the educational and consumer world is saturated with robots. We see them everywhere, from toys to day-to-day life products, and all over the industrial and economic world.

Back in 1998, LEGO released Lego Mindstorms: The Robotics Invention System. There were some other products created by LEGO prior to this kit, but for all intents and purposes, we are going to focus on this first RCX Mindstorms kit, 9719, as the kicking-off point for our quick journey through the robotic systems over time. 

The reason we are going to do a quick dive into the incredible history of LEGO Mindstorms is to...

Technical requirements

For this chapter, there are no technical requirements.

1998 – LEGO Mindstorms: The Robotics Invention System (RCX)

If we start several years prior to 1998 and look back to 1982, LEGO had a new product line called Technic (have you heard of it?). A few years into this new line of products, LEGO began to work with Seymour Papert (one of my educational heroes) to create programmable LEGO. Papert even has a book called Mindstorms (ironic?). One of Papert's colleagues, named Mitch Resnick (from MIT Lifelong Kindergarten), who I have had the pleasure of meeting, presented a prototype to LEGO in Billund and things started to take shape.

Fast forward to 1998, when LEGO released the Robot Command eXplorer (RCX):

Figure 1.1 – RCX 2.00 brick hub

You'll know this brick as the yellow brick that started a journey unlike any other – a powerful programming device with 32 KB of RAM with no USB (not available to the public until September 1998), no Wi-Fi (cell phones were just emerging with...

2006 – LEGO Mindstorms NXT

Cue the fond memories of the gray and orange NXT robotics kit. Heading back in time, I vividly remember hosting my first robotics summer camp for students when I found out I had access to seven of these kits. This was also the time when I first dipped my toe into the FIRST LEGO League:

Figure 1.2 – LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick

In 2006, LEGO updated the robot line with the NXT. I am sure many of you remember, recognize, or have fond memories of using the NXT. There were two versions of this kit, retail (8527) and educational (9797). Additionally, the kits had an upgrade to NXT 2.0 (8547). More importantly, the programming interface was LabVIEW, which is what many of us grew to love with the NXT and EV3. It was also with this robotic kit that there started to be a huge list of various programming languages made available by third parties if you did not want to use block-based coding.

In 2009, LEGO upgraded this kit with...

2013 – LEGO Mindstorms EV3

We now enter the era of LEGO robotics when almost everyone reading this book spent more hours than they care to admit building, programming, and designing robots using the LEGO EV3. Whether you build as a hobby as a child or Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL), enter competitions such as FIRST LEGO League, teach in education settings, or simply just love using LEGO to bring ideas to life, we can all agree that the EV3 is a rather robust robotic kit that allows the builder to accomplish just about anything:

Figure 1.3 – LEGO Mindstorms EV3 brick

Because this kit has been around for a while, and also due to its popularity, there are so many third-party sensors and add-ons available that the sky is truly the limit when it comes to designing ideas.

Just like the NXT, LEGO released two versions of this kit. There was the retail version and the educational version. Again, builders used a version of LabVIEW to program, but recently...

2020 – LEGO SPIKE Prime

2020 ended up being a big year for LEGO. This kit was originally slated for release in August 2019, but it did not actually hit the market until January 2020. This is a fascinating kit to explore because it marked a shift to a new era of STEM, robotics, and marketing for the LEGO audience:

Figure 1.4 – LEGO SPIKE Prime brick

This kit is a LEGO Education product, but it is available on the main LEGO site. We see a transition away from making two kits, one retail and one education. Instead, it is available to all, which is a smart move as the boundaries of learning have become so intertwined, with virtual learning, homeschool, after-school events, and regular school.

This kit is designed for an upper elementary and middle school audience (grades 6–8). The builder will notice some changes from previous kits. First, the color scheme is brighter and more alive compared to the whites, grays, and blacks of the previous...

2020 – LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit

All of this history brings us to the latest LEGO robotics kit, the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit (51515). Let's take a look at what we know about this kit.

First, just to be clear, this is the kit that is designed to be the new robot in the Mindstorms product line. The SPIKE Prime is designed for a specific age and this kit is the new version of the Mindstorms. You will notice on the LEGO site that EV3 is now marked as retiring soon.

There are many similar features that compare to the SPIKE Prime. First, the hub is the same, with a rechargeable hub. The hub works with an app to allow Bluetooth programming and building. The difference between the brick hubs is simply the color scheme. The Robot Inventor brick has a teal color while the SPIKE Prime has a yellow color:

Figure 1.5 – LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Hub

We will explore in greater detail the new parts, elements, coding, platforms...

Summary

As we took a trip down memory lane, we witnessed how LEGO has evolved their products as technology, costs, and opportunities present themselves. It is crazy to think that this work has been going on since the 90s. Depending on your experience and when you first entered the Mindstorms world, we all have a favorite product. Whether you are a die-hard NXT fan, still hanging on to the glory of EV3, or excited about the new possibilities of the Robot Inventor Kit, we are fortunate to have such cool robotics to bring the ideas in our minds to life.

Change is always happening and sometimes we like change and sometimes we don't. As our world changes daily, so do the opportunities we have to build, program, and play. This latest kit by LEGO is going to provide us with so many wonderful opportunities to bring the ideas in our heads into the real world. Let's take a closer look at the new kit and explore the new elements included in the kit, along with some of the new programming...

Further reference

• This link will take you to a spreadsheet displaying all the possible programming languages allowed in FIRST LEGO League and the programming languages not allowed, to help you explore all the possibilities of coding: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OxyXEIB5pHzOSpAuOKY_2XeK1Uomv7lzHLVG1ZKLFH8/edit#gid=0.