Now do crosswords
Hans Andersson is a fellow who made a Lego Rubik’s Cube solver (which, amazingly enough, is only one among many).
He has now gone one better.
Possibly quite a lot more than one better, actually.
Yes, this is a Mindstorms NXT robot that solves sudoku. It’s got pretty good penmanship, too.
Like the Lego 3D scanner, Andersson’s new creation isn’t what you’d call the fastest of robots. But if you’re not in a hurry, I’d say this robot does its job considerably better than the also-amazing Lego movie projector.
(Via, once again, the excellent TechnicBricks.)
Every time I build something cool with lego, someone always comes along and proves that not only are my creations just not cool enough, but also that it's possible to build a T-800 army and conquer the world with it.
As a matter of fact, it would not surprise me if the blackened heart of Skynet was a Mindstorms brick.
Comment by rndmnmbr — August 24, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
I'm ignorant of the powers of Lego. Can this be modified to fill in a Tax Return? Can it copy my signature?
Comment by SA Penguin — August 24, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
SA Penguin - I demand that you submit to a Turing test to prove that YOU are not a Mindstorms NXT module.
Comment by kamikrae-z — August 24, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
Very much like watching my girlfriend. Except for the cute "tongue tip sticking out of the mouth in concentration thing". But just as exciting.
Comment by RichVR — August 25, 2009 @ 8:48 am
I think I can scan a Sudoku (x) times faster than this bemicroprocessored Lego creation, but I think it can solve one about (x) times faster than I can... it would be an interesting race indeed.
Incidentally, the CAPTCHA numbers I got before I logged in were pixellated numbers similar to those that appear on the Mindstorms bot's screen.
Comment by FuzzyPlushroom — August 25, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Damnit, and I thought I was all clever putting retractable landing gear and variable sweep wings on the planes I made with legos.:(
Comment by TwoHedWlf — August 26, 2009 @ 5:26 am
Now that I've watched it yet again, I have to ask. How do we not know that it was not programmed to put the right numbers in the right places in the first place?
The girlfriend asked this. So I am forced to be very skeptical now.
Yes honey, I asked.
Comment by RichVR — August 27, 2009 @ 2:35 pm
And given that the same author has previously done the rubiks cube, for which he hands out the source code, I'm pretty sure that you'll be able to find the source code for this machine as well, soon.
Comment by Popup — August 27, 2009 @ 9:54 pm