LEGO Design/Lego Mindstorms

Lego Mindstorms is a lego product that allows users to build robots with lego parts. It has a programmable brick, software, motors, sensors, and technic parts. The package also comes with software that allows users to program the robots. There are four types of robot controllers that are found anywhere; RCX, NXT 1.0, NXT 2.0 and EV3. EV3 is the latest version.

Sensors

Touch sensor - The touch sensor allows the robot to have the sense of touch. It detects when the button at the front of it is being pressed and released. You can use the touch sensor for many purposes. If you were making a football playing robot you could program the EV3 to push with an arm when it detects an object in front of it.

Sound Sensor - The sound sensor can hear both decibels and adjusted decibels. The sensor can detect sounds up to 90 decibels.

Light sensor - The Light Sensor is one of two sensors that give the NXT sight [The Ultrasonic Sensor is the other]. The Light Sensor allows your EV3 to tell the difference between light and dark. It can read the light intensity in a room and measure the light intensity of colored surfaces.

Ultrasonic sensor - This sensor allows your EV3 to detect objects in front of it, and how far away the object is. It can see objects up to 255 cm away and is very precise.

Motors

Large Servo motor - This motor gives your EV3 the ability to move. It has a built in rotation sensor so you can state how many turns it has to take. You get 2 of these motors in the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set.

Small Servo motor - Its a smaller version of the large servo motor with less power and smaller form. You get 1 of these motors in the EV3 set.

EV3 Intelligent Brick

The intelligent brick is the piece that controls your robot creations. It has 3 motor ports and 4 sensor ports as well as a USB port to connect it to your computer to program and an sd card to store files. It also has a built-in loudspeaker.