Product Description

Learn from the LEGO Masters!

While many LEGO books exist that show step-by-step instructions, they lack substantially detailed explanations about the building techniques used by the authors and the general concepts that are fundamental to the projects. These reflections are the foundation of LEGO MINDSTORMS Masterpieces. The goal of this book is to present very sophisticated projects with the maximum level of detail. In the book you hold in your hands you will find not only high quality step-by-step instructions for building all of the robots, but also a complete description for each of them, including goals, building techniques, programming techniques, and the theory supporting the designer’s choices.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #760866 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 600 pages

From the Publisher
These incredibly sophisticated and technically detailed projects will challenge the most advanced builder:

Stair-Climber by Doug Carlson is based on the tri-star wheel concept and can drive, step, and climb over obstacles!

Learning Brick Sorter by Mario Ferrari uses the theory of adaptability, as it has the ability not only to sort bricks by color, but also the ability to learn how.

The LEGO Turing Machine by Giulio Ferrari is a revolutionary device created to study computability, and which allows us to journey to the time of Artificial Intelligence.

PneumADDic II by Kevin Clague describes a collection of building and pneumatic techniques that should be fundamental tools for any serious Mindstormer.

Synchropillar by Kevin Clague, demonstrates that by using pneumatics you can achieve some simple automation characteristics.

Shape-Shifting Camera Tank by Miguel Agullo is based on a real-life search-and-explore robot, the Variable Geometry Tracked Vehicle (VGTV). When built, the SSCT is a cool toy that allows us a peek into a very practical application of real life robotics: telepresence.

CyberArm IV by Hideaki Yabuki, featuring many famous pneumatics components, is controlled by a sensor feedback system.

The book's CD-ROM features complete RCX and NQC Code files, movies of robots, and a bonus chapter by Hideaki Yabuki.

About the Author
Doug Carlsen, designer extraordinaire known for his work on mobility issues.

Mario Ferrari, co-author of the best selling Building Robots with LEGO Mindstorms and developer of the Learning Brick Sorter

Giulio Ferrari, co-author of the best selling Building Robots with LEGO Mindstorms and developer of the LEGO Turing Machine

Kevin Clague, creator of LPub and LSynth, and co-author of LEGO Software Power Tools

Miguel Agullo, creator of the Technic Puppy Web site and biped expert

Hideaki Yabuki, LEGO pioneer and contributor to the 10 Cool LEGO series of books

Ralph Hempel, pbForth creator and co-author of Extreme Mindstorms

Customer Reviews

Great Addition To The Lego Mindstorms Community
After building many of the robots presented in Lego Mindstorms Masterpieces published by Syngress, I feel I am now qualified to give a fair personal assessment of this book. I have purchased many Lego Mindstorms books and each one has great ideas and a lot to offer. All books have shortcomings and room for improvement. How good a book is depends on how well it address the readers needs. My needs center on my use of Lego Mindstorms to teach mechanical engineering, logic, programming and robotics to my 13-year-old daughter. Lego Mindstorms Masterpieces is the newest addition to our Lego toolbox. There are so many positive things to say about this publication I'll place the very few items I would have preferred done differently at the end of this review.

A few key benefits this book offers to anyone involved with Lego Mindstorms are complete, well illustrated assembly instructions, detailed commentary by the authors with additional tips to aid in the construction, explanations of where the inspirations for the creation came from with historical references, web site listings for additional information and a e-book CD-ROM with program files. Many of the authors have active web sites of their own and are available to generously help people stuck during construction.

Lego Masterpieces not only expand the reader's knowledge of Lego Mindstorms applications, but engineering and robots in general. The concepts presented can be applied anywhere the logic, computers, or machines are designed and built. The book shows that the construction of a machine must go hand in hand with the programming to best fit an application. Giulio Ferrari explores basic Artificial Intelligence and the foundations of modern computers with the Turing Machine. Another chapter presents the mechanics and theory of creating logic cells amazingly through the use of pneumatics and then combining them into the synchronous PneumADDic II calculating machine by Kevin Clague. And again by Kevin, the building of an asynchronous artificial muscle using Autonomous Pneumatic Circuits in the Synchropillar without RCX programmed control. An all terrain wheeled vehicle by Doug Carlson uses his Tri-Star drive design called the Stair Climber and will crawl over and out of almost anything. A spy robot by Miguel Aguilio called The Shape-Shifting Camera Tank utilizes Vision Command's camera, can increase or decrease it's height and you may control it with it's own Lego parts constructed joystick. The Learning Brick Sorter by Mario Ferrari, which combines a robotic arm with an automated task, blends the machine with excellent basic AI programming, which can learn new tasks. And finally, the most advance Lego robotic arm I've ever seen is in the chapter on CyberArm IV by Hideaki Yabuki. Not only does this arm have five Degrees of Freedom and 180-degree rotation, but you can also build the optional Power Glove to operate the robotic arm from your own hand movements!

The few complaints I have of this book are that the Bill Of Materials on some of the chapters are printed so small and illegible that I couldn't read them with a magnifying glass! Adding a page and printing the illustrations larger and clearer would have better represented the quality of the overall material. The other complaint is found in most books. Someone should proof read it before publication. Spell checkers don't think!

My final message about this book is BUY IT and start collecting the parts you'll need. It expands the frontiers of Lego Mindstorms and you'll need all the parts you can get your hands on!

Real robots, backed by real robotics, and made with LEGOs
This book has gathered together "Masterpieces" from some of the the world's greatest LEGO creators. Builders from the US, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan have brought you their passions, the theories behind each masterpiece, and detailed building and programming techniques. "LEGO Mindstorms Masterpieces" is truly at the zenith of all related books and I believe it will become a true masterpiece both in name and in reality.

This book began in July of 2002. And, while the the creation, writing and editing was extremely difficult, the authors fought mightily to accomplish our goal: to build LEGO robots both suitable for Master Builders and worthy of this book's title! Amazing PneumADDic II and Synchropillar by Kevin as a computer processor specialist and creator of LPub and LSynth. Splendid Stair-Climber by Doug who is a well known creator of several Omni Drive Vehicles. And, two awesome works - Learning Brick Sorter and The LEGO Turing Machine that were invented by the famous Ferrari brothers - they are co-authors of the best selling "Building Robots with LEGO Mindstorms" and have been called the "DaVincis of LEGO". Biped robot expert Miguel created complex SSCT faithfully based on the real robot that was active for life search and explore in WTC, New York. Lastly, a robotic arm driven by 10 motors and feedback system - CyberArm IV that I have created as a series in four years. All of these are the real robots that are backed by real robotics - only the materials are LEGO! We are very pleased that we could explore a new frontier in LEGO Mindstorms, and be able to offer it in book form.

As the one of pioneers of LEGO robots, I have had my experience of the results in the MIT Media Lab fortunately in the middle of the 80s, and the result of my writing of over half year keeping is included in bundle CD-ROM as a over 50 pages bonus chapter. I have tried to write about a lot of topics to explain the world of robots and LEGO Mindstorms - history of LEGO robot or their philosophy of the LEGO Group, precious list and description of early LEGO educational sets for control learning, personal robot boom in the 80s, from a more than 300-year-old Japanese automata (the Karakuri) to the latest state-of-the-art robotics. I believe that my discussion and description about the way of thinking and creation - included building, programming, CAD and even about Art - are useful in particular.

We hope that this book will never lose its value and that it will become loved by people of all generations.

From Tokyo
Hideaki Yabuki
Media Activist

If you like Mindstorms, buy this book.
Included are complete building instructions for some truly amazing robots/machines. You'll need LOTS of Lego to build them though. Even if you haven't you'll be inspired by the authors imagination and ingenuity. The writing is good, and the descriptions/instructions detailed and clear.
The best reason though for buying the book is the included CD which contains no less than ten other Mindstorms books in PDF format,including the most excellent 'Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms'. I had expected to find software and sample programs, but their absence is more than made up for by the books.