Toys in the Classroom: LEGO MindStorms as an Educational Haptics Platform

Haptics has the potential to be: a powerful tool in science and engineering education of college and pre-college students. This paper proposes teaching engineering and programming concepts using haptic interfaces created with LEGO MindStorms, a popular system for developing robotic devices. A general overview of the MindStorms system is presented, followed by the results of experiments that characterize the performance of the MindStorms components and establish the suitability of MindStorms for constructing haptic interfaces. Two prototype haptic interfaces are created and interfaced with a PC-based graphics display. Initial results show that MindStorms provides an excellent platform for designing, constructing, programming, and interfacing simple haptic devices,. Potential uses in college and pre-college curricula are discussed.