Lego Announces EV3 at CES

With an eye to younger hackers, Lego unveiled its refresh of its popular Mindstorms robot kit at CES.

For fans of robots – especially the younger ones – one name has been synonymous with starting out in the hobby. Lego Mindstorms has set been offering a streamlined, user friendly option to novice robot designers and programmers.

It’s no surprise the Lego continues its development of the platform, and it chose CES as the venue to
announce its newest starter robotics kit
, due

(AP Photo)

later this year. The Lego  Mindstorms EV3 replaces the venerable NXT model. According to Lego, the new platform is intended to attract more interest from a generation accustomed to hacking, smartphone apps and particularly control and interaction wih the smartphone interface through Bluetooth wireless link.

Previous Mindstorms kits allowed interaction with mobile devices with Bluetooth, but this was restricted to Android. The new Lego kits are built to play well with both Android and Apple’s iOS devices. The system runs a version of Linux, opening up a wide range of programming opportunities and open source code access.