Lego Dacta and MIT

In 1985, Seymour Papert, Mitchel Resnick and Stephen Ocko created a company called Microworlds with the intent of developing a construction kit that could be animated by computers for educational purposes.^[3]: 14 Papert had previously created the Logo programming language as a tool to "support the development of new ways of thinking and learning",^[4]: xiv and employed "Turtle" robots to physically act out the programs in the real world.^{[4]: 55–56} As the types of programs created were limited by the shape of the Turtle, the idea came up to make a construction kit that could use Logo commands to animate a creation of the learner's own design.^[5]: 3 Similar to the "floor turtle" robots used to demonstrate Logo commands in the real world, a construction system that ran Logo commands would also demonstrate them in the real world, but allowing the child to construct their own creations benefitted the learning experience by putting them in control ^[6] In considering which construction system to partner with, they wanted a "low floor high ceiling" approach, something that was easy to pick up but very powerful. To this end, they decided to use Lego bricks due to the system and diversity of pieces, and the Logo language due to the groups familiarity with the software and its ease of use.^[3]: 14 Lego was receptive to collaboration, particularly because its educational division had founding goals very similar to those of the Microworlds company. The collaboration very quickly moved to the newly minted MIT Media lab, where there was an open sharing of ideas.^[3]: 14 As a sponsor of the entire lab, Lego was allowed royalty-free rights to mass-produce any technology produced by Papert, Resnick and Ocko's group; and was also allowed to send an employee over to assist with research, so they sent the engineer, Alan Tofte (also spelled Toft) who helped with the design of the programmable brick.^{[3]: 35 [7]: 74} As another part of the MIT Media Lab was community outreach, so the bricks would be used working with children in schools for both research and educational purposes.

Lego/Logo and the Technic Control Center (1985)

The first experiment of combining Lego and the Logo programming language was called Lego/Logo and it started in 1985.^[6] Similar to the "floor turtles" used to demonstrate Logo commands in the real world, Lego/Logo used Logo commands to animate Lego creations. It is important that children could build their own machines to program, as they would then care more about their projects and be more willing to explore the mathematical concepts involved in making them move. The Lego/Logo system allowed children to create their own designs and experiments, offered multiple paths for learning, and encouraged a sense of community. First, machines are built out of Lego. The machines are then connected to a computer and programmed in a modified version of Logo. The Lego/Logo system introduced new types of parts for making creations such as motors, sensors, and lights. The motors and sensors are connected to an interface box that communicates with a computer.^[6] Lego/Logo would later be commercialized by the Lego group as the (Lego) Technic Control Center.^[5]: 3 It was observed that using the Lego/Logo system, children developed a form of knowledge about the physical world that allowed those even without mathematics or verbal skills to solve problems effectively using the system.^[7]: 23

Logo Brick 1st Generation, "Grey Brick" (1986)

While Lego/Logo was powerful, it was restricted somewhat by the requirement to have the creations attached to a computer.^[5]: 3 The group began working on further iterations of the Lego/Logo environment to produce a robot that could interact not only with the environment but with other robots programmed in the same system.^[7]: 24 The experiments with an untethered brick (called the Logo Brick or "Grey Brick") began in the fall of 1986. To speed up the design process, the Logo Brick contained the processor chip from an Apple II computer. It ran an adapted version of Lego/Logo written for the Apple II computer.^[7]: 74 The Lego/Logo interface box, The previous development of the group, had only two sensor ports available, which the design team observed were not always enough. To address this, they gave the Logo Brick four sensor ports. The Logo Brick was made out of a modified Lego battery box and was about the size of a deck of cards.^{[7]: 74, 23} The Logo Brick was tested in schools.

Development of Mindstorms Brand

The Lego Mindstorms product line was the first project of "Home Education", a division of Lego Education established by employee Tormod Askildsen in 1995. Askildsen, who had previously spent ten years working for Lego Education, had grown frustrated working with teaching professionals and wanted to create an improved educational experiece that was delivered directly towards children. Home Education decided to incorporate technology into their products based on market research that concluded that children found learning that involved technology interesting.^[8] Lego Mindstorms started development in April 1996.^[9]: 1061 The concept for the set was based on technology created in partnership with the MIT Media Lab. MIT Media Lab had been experimenting with combining Lego and programming since the early 1980s, and Lego had previously commercialized some of this technology as classroom products in the Lego Dacta line. The programmable brick (or pbrick^[10]) was a refinement of these early concepts, which had limited range because they had to be tethered to a computer to run.^[3]: 24

Lego had been interested in mass-producing the pbrick since its creation in the 1980s, but at the time it was considered unfeasible due to the lack of computers in schools and households and the relative expense of electrical components.^[3]: 25 in the early 1990s Technology began to become more of a child's life, and the toy market accordingly began shifting more towards computerized toys.^[11]: 37 Many of Lego's attempts at producing electronic toys had languished at the point that Lego began developing MIT's programmable brick into a consumer product.^[9]: 1061 MIT continued developing the pbrick concept, creating a "Red Brick" version between 1994 and 1996 that improved the previous version. By the mid-1990s personal computers were relatively common in households and the components required to produce the pbrick went down in price, making mass production feasible.^[3]: 25 Development on what would later be known as the Robotics Invention System started in 1996 as the flagship product of the newly created home-learning division of Lego Education (Lego Dacta). The product line's name "Mindstorms" was intended to express the user experience of the product, it is named after Papert's book Mindstorms, as the user experience was similar to the educational constructivism concepts described in his book.^[12]

The project's at-first low profile allowed the Mindstorms team the freedom to develop the product using operating procedures then-unorthodox to the Lego Group.^[9]: 1062 Unlike traditional Lego sets, the Mindstorms Robotics Invention System did not come with step-by-step instructions.^[8] The kit also did not have a main model, nor was the play driven by storytelling. To bridge the gap between this new play experience and pre-existing Lego ones, the Mindstorms team created a lot of opportunities for people interested in the product to engage with each other, such as the creation of Mindstorms.com, Mindstorms Discovery Centers, and the FIRST Lego League.^[12] The creation of these experiences was done through partnerships with a relatively large amount of external groups that the Mindstorms team interacted with as equal partners, something that was uncommon for the Lego group at the time.^[9]: 1063 To ease tensions between Mindstorms and more conventional products, the project team was given autonomy from Lego's product development process and instead reported directly to the company's senior management.^[9]: 1064

Development of RCX Brick

MIT Media Lab's "Red Brick" served as the prototype for Lego Mindstorms' RCX

The Lego Mindstorms team used the insights that MIT researchers discovered from testing the 3rd Generation Logo Brick ("Red Brick") in schools as the basis for the development of the mass-produced programmable brick.^[5]: 5 The physical programmable brick was re-engineered from the ground up, as the experimental programmable bricks were not designed for robustness or cost-effective manufacturing.^{[3]: 19, 26} The programming language of the product was developed with help from members of the MIT Media lab. Lego decided to use a Visual programming language for Mindstorms, inspired by the LOGOBlocks language previously used with programmable brick experiments, in order to make the product accessible to children who might be unfamiliar with programming.^[3]: 29 While the technology that Mindstorms was based on was aimed towards "all children", the chosen target demographic of Lego Mindstorms was intentionally narrow, in order to garner positive press by outselling expectations. The decision was made to aim the product towards 10 to 14-year-old boys, partly because it was Lego's main target demographic, and partly based on market research (not substantiated by the findings of the MIT Media Lab) which concluded that this demographic would be most attracted to computerized toys. This choice of target demographic directly informed the color of the RCX brick (which was made yellow and black to resemble construction equipment) and the sample uses for the Mindstorms kit (such as making autonomous robots).^[3]: 28

Launch

Promotion of the Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System began 6 months before the product was planned to launch.^[12] The product was first soft launched with the opening of the Mindstorms Discovery Center at the Museum of Science and Industry, where children could interact with the Mindstorms Robotics Invention System to complete set tasks, getting them familiar with the product.^[13] The Mindstorms product was launched concurrently with Lego Cybermaster, another Lego product spun off from the MIT programmable brick technology that was more in line with the traditional product philosophies of the Lego group.^[9]: 1067

The Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System (RIS) was released September 1998^[14] at a retail price of $199. Instead of being sold at toy stores, the product was sold at electronics stores like BestBuy and CompUSA, due to the relatively high cost of the set.^[12] The entire production run (of between 60 and 100 thousand units^[15]) sold out within 3 months.^{[11]: 181 [3]: 30}

The second edition of the RIS, Robotics Invention System 1.5, was released in the summer of 1999.^{[11]: 187 [10]}

A third edition, RIS 2.0, was launched in 2001.^[16]

Fanbase and "Right-to-Hack"

Despite being aimed towards children, the Robotics Invention System quickly found an audience with adults and hackers of all ages; Lego company surveys conducted a few months after launch determined that seventy percent of Lego Mindstorms Hobbyists were adults. Shortly following the product's launch, adult hobbyists began sharing reverse-engineered versions of the RCX brick's Microcode and Firmware on the internet, leading to the development of alternative programming languages for the RCX such as "Not Quite C" (NQC) and alternative operating systems for the brick like lejOS. The Lego Group briefly considered sending cease-and-desist letters to websites sharing the RCX's proprietary code.^[11]: 183 However, The Mindstorms team successfully argued that the embrace of the product by the hacking community proved that the product was worth developing. In order to foster this burgeoning community, an official forum was established on the Lego website and a "right to hack" clause was added to end user license agreement of the Lego Mindstorms software. An official software developers kit for the RCX would later be released on the Mindstorms website. A significant amount of products focusing on the RIS were released by adult hobbyists, including how-to books, and unofficial sensors and hardware. A convention for Lego Mindstorms hobbyists, named Mindfest, started in 1999.^{[11]: 181–184}

Despite strong sales, The Mindstorms development team was neglected by upper management. As a cost-cutting measure, the Mindstorms office was shut down in 2001, and team members were laid-off or assigned to other projects.^[10] The Lego Group continued to produce the Robotics Invention System 2.0 after the Mindstorms office was shut down, selling around 40,000 units per year without advertising ^[11]: 189 until the set was discontinued in 2006.^[17]

Scout

Lego also released a blue computer called the Scout, which has 2 sensor ports, 2 motor ports (plus one extra if linked with a Micro Scout using a fiber-optic cable), and a built-in light sensor, but no PC interface. It comes with the Robotics Discovery Set. The Scout can be programmed from a collection of built-in program combinations. In order to program the Scout, a user must enable "power mode" on it. The Scout can store one program.

The Scout is based on a Toshiba microcontroller with 32 KB of ROM and 1 KB of RAM, where about 400 bytes are available for user programs. Due to the extremely limited amount of RAM, many predefined subroutines were provided in ROM. The Scout only supports passive external sensors, which means that only touch, temperature and other unpowered sensors can be used. The analog-to-digital converters used in the Scout only have a resolution of 8 bits, in contrast to the 10-bit converters of the RCX.^[26]

There was a plan for Lego to create a booster set that allows programming the Scout from a computer with software such as RCX code. However, due to the complexity of this project, it was abandoned.

The RCX can control the Scout brick using the "Send IR Message" program block. The RCX does all of the controlling, and therefore can be programmed with the PC, while the Scout accepts commands. The Scout brick must have all of its options set to "off" during this process.

Micro Scout

The Micro Scout was added as an entry-level to Lego robotics. It is a very limited Pbrick with a single built-in light sensor and a single built-in motor. It has seven built-in programs and can be controlled by a Scout, Spybotics or RCX unit using VLL. Like the Scout, the Micro Scout is also based on a microcontroller from Toshiba.

The unit was sold as part of the Droid Developer Kit (featuring R2-D2) and later the Dark Side Developer Kit (featuring an AT-AT Imperial Walker).