10 Cool LEGO Mindstorms: Dark Side Robots, Transports, and Creatures -- Amazing Projects You Can Build in Under an Hour by Syngress, J. P. Brown, Soren Rolighed, Miguel Agullo, Hideaki Yabuki

From the Publisher

Ok. You bought the kit for yourself or one of your kids. You used the instructions in the box to build a robot or two. Now what? You may not be ready to design and build your own robots, but you don't want to build the same robot over again. This book is the perfect way to build additional projects from the same kit, and then to improvise and design your own. Ten Cool Projects. One hour each. Perfect.

Robots Included:

Ludic Ordinance Units, (LOUs), are usually put together to create entertainment for the troops, but they usually end up serving as moving targets for Imperial Stormtroopers.

Scorpion Assassin Droid a silent and deadly hunter. Tracking its intended target with a variety of sensors, it moves stealthily to within striking distance.

Draigons swoop from the sky to attack their prey, carrying off to their lairs to be devoured those creatures unfortunate enough to become their victims.

Droid Transporters can carry up to a dozen Droids over rough terrain and deliver them where they are needed.

X-Stormer is a prototype of what would eventually become the AT-AT. Imperial engineers worked for many years to create the X-Stormers.

Super Battle Droid is a biped that walks on two legs by shifting its weight from side to side and moving its legs forwards and backwards.

Go-Rillas are fast biped robots often used by the smugglers and bounty hunters of the galaxy to defend their hideouts. What they lack in intelligence they more than make up for in speed and brute strength.

Imperial All-Terrain Scout Transport, better known as the AT-ST, is a small, agile, armored biped that can carry two Imperial Stormtroopers.

Orbital Defense Cannons, guided by their large targeting radar dish, can shoot down even the largest Imperial Star Destroyers and Corellian Cruisers.

Imperial Hounds serve as both companions for the troops and as powerful tools of war on the battlefields of the Empire.

Author Biographies:

Hideaki Yabuki works as a Media Activist promoting new technologies to the next generation. To him, robotics is the most important of these technologies. He was first introduced to LEGO robots in 1985 by a friend of his who had recently returned from the MIT Media Lab with some LEGO Dacta products. His robot in this book, the Scorpion, is the result of much trial and error on his part.

Kevin Clague graduated in 1983 from Iowa State University with a bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Engineering. For the past 18 years, Kevin has worked as a Diagnostic Engineer at the Amdahl Corporation. For the last two years, he has also acted as a Senior Staff Engineer doing verification work at Sun Microsystems on their Ultra-Sparc V RISC processor. Kevin has two major hobbies: theatrical lighting and LEGO Mindstorms. Kevin has been playing with the RIS 1.5 for several years now and is currently working on LPub, an application to revolutionize the world of creating online LEGO building instructions.

Miguel Agullo was born in Spain but has lived abroad for long periods of time, from the Far East to South America, from central Europe to the U.S. His wide range of interests is responsible for his work in such diverse industries as finance, media, aeronautics, and antique trading. Trained as a journalist and impressed with the candor and resourcefulness of the online LEGO community, Miguel tries to give something back by regularly updating his Web site with instructions for new models, new Ldraw pieces, and anything he thinks is worth sharing with other LEGO aficionados. His building interests revolve around robotics, and specifically biomechanics: creating mechanisms that mimic the behavior of natural devices such as legs or arms. His creations include biped walkers, robots that jump, and a fully functional (including a brake!) LEGO motorcycle.

Søren Rolighed is a data warehouse consultant, working on building and maintaining databases for telco-data in the largest data warehouse in Denmark. Like almost all Danish kids, he started playing with LEGO at an early age. As an adult he has continued with his passion for LEGOs, and the introduction of the LEGO Technics and LEGO Mindstorms kits opened up a whole new world of possibilities!

J.P. Brown is a Consultant Environmental Conservator who has worked on such historical sites as Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA and George Washington's mansion, Mount Vernon, VA. He first became interested in LEGO Mindstorms in July 1999, but his interest did not really take off until he discovered Dave Baum's Not Quite C (NQC) programming environment for the RCX brick later that year. He quickly became involved as a moderator for LEGO Mindstorms forums on the Web, and was later selected by LEGO as a preview builder for the Mindstorms Vision Command. His robot, Biped II, won the February 2001 Mindstorms Hall of Fame, Special Competition, but he is perhaps best known for his Rubik's Cube solving robot, CubeSolver, which was featured in the New York Times in October 2001 and other papers around the world.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Super Battle Droid

In Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the evil Sith lord Darth Sidious headed a separatist movement in the Republic, with the nefarious goal of ruling the entire galaxy. Darth Sideous had turned Jedi Knight Count Dooku to the dark side, and used him to lead the separatist movement. The Techo Union, one of the members of the separatist movement, created an army of Super Battle Droids, which were more powerful and aggressive than the Battle Droids used by the Trade Federation in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

We first heard of the Clone Wars in Episode IV: A New Hope, when Luke Skywalker and old Ben Kenobi (Obi-Wan) were talking about Luke's father. In Episode II, on the planet Geonosis, we see the start of the Clone Wars, as the Jedi Knights wage war with the Battle Droid and Super Battle Droid army to rescue Senator Amadala, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker.

In this chapter you will build a LEGO Mindstorms version of a Super Battle Droid. It is a biped that walks on two legs by shifting its weight from side to side and moving its legs forward and backward. Building the Super Battle Droid can be tricky because the side-to-side weight shifting needs to be timed just right to match the legs going forward and backward.