**1. Introduction**

First launched in 1998, LEGO® MINDSTORMS® for Schools (LMfS) and ROBOLAB™, each year have helped countless students grasp science, technology, engineering, and mathematics concepts with hands-on, naturally motivating building sets, programming software, and curriculum relevant activity materials. Hands-on experiences are vital to stimulate the interest of students. One of the key challenges of undergraduate engineering education is providing students with this experience that includes solid theoretical underpinnings and a clear connection to industrial practice. Nowhere is it truer than in engineering, process control, mechatronics and robotics. Just about a decade ago, LEGO introduced a new line of kits called MindStorms that focused on robotics. LEGO MindStorm education is the next generation in educational robotics, enabling students to discover science, technology, engineering and mathematics in a fun, encouraging hands – on way. At the heart of these kits is the microcomputer called the RCX brick. It is a completely programmable LEGO brick with three power outputs and three sensor inputs. Students want to know what awaits them when have completed their mathematics, computer studies and science courses. By combining the power of the LEGO building system with the LEGO MindStorm education technology, teams of students can design, build, program and test robots. Showing students interesting future possibilities will help motivate them and encourage them to continue, where many students might otherwise drop or change fields. LEGO MindStorm is the ideal equipment to do the trick. This unit accomplishes three goals; it creates interest in robotics, engineering and science and it also encourages creativity and team work among students. Working together on guided and open ended engineering projects, the team members develop creativity and problem solving skills along with other important mathematics and science knowledge. Students also become more skilled in communication, organization and research, which help prepare them for future success in higher levels of schooling and in the work place. Although the MindStorms kit is a wonderful way to teach students about robotics, it is limited to a dry environment, such as class room floor. For the past decade, the MindStorms have been used in computer science resources to teach concepts from object-oriented programming (Barnes D., 2002) to artificial intelligence (Klassner F., 2002). They have been used to introduce students to the exciting world of computers (Weisheit F., 2004). The LEGO robots are often said to increase the interest of students in computing courses and they make class work more fun and exciting.

Lego Based Computer Communication for Business and Learning 67

program to take sensor input from up to three inputs and react to that input by controlling the direction and speed of up to three motors. Combined with the technical parts, you can

In this project, Lego bricks are built to perform different tasks. The NXT robot was programmed manually with different configurations. Each sensor was tested with a short program and it worked very well. Upon testing all sensors, (sound, light, ultrasonic and touch sensors) the software was used to develop exercises comprising of a combination of different sensors. The results of testing the brick manually and with the NXT software were the same. The main components of the project are LabVIEW and Mindstorm NXT softwares. It is with these softwares that our focus is on. The NXT is actually a little computer and interface unit that that can be programmed to take sensor input from up to three inputs and react to that input by controlling the direction and speed of up to three motors. Combined with the technical parts, sophisticated program can be built quickly to control mobile, autonomous robots. It is an autonomous Lego microcomputer that can be programmed using a PC. The NXT serves as the brain of Lego Mindstorms inventions. It uses sensors to take input from its environment, process data, and signals output motors to turn on and off. Users first build their robot using the NXT and Lego elements. They then create a program for their invention using NXT code, a simple yet powerful programming language. Next, the program can be downloaded to the NXT using a special infrared transmitter. The creations

In 1989 Martin created the MIT Robot Design course following from Flowers' Introduction to Design course that was offered in the Mechanical Engineering department. The work on this project culminated into a textbook (Martin F., 1989). Students learn about the basics of building robots from kits and the course ends with a contest. Yanco in 2001 has adopted this course using the Bot-ball game as the tournament at the end of the term (Martin F., 2000). Mataric in 1998 has developed an award winning course called Introduction to Robotics (Yanco H., 2001) which takes a hands-on approach to the field of robotics. Students use both Handy board microcontroller and Lego MindStorms system. Another introductory course on robotics that uses Lego MindStorms is the Building Intelligent Robots course taught by Dean at Brown in 2001 (Martaric M., 1998). A few people have developed courses using hands-on robotics that do not focus on teaching robotics as the main subject. Littman's course on Programming Under Uncertainty (Dean T., 2001) teaches about a variety of methods for programming as its title says, under uncertainty, including Markov Decision Process and POMDP's and variety of machine learning techniques like reinforcement learning and genetic algorithms. Students in this course used Lego robots to demonstrate their knowledge to the methodologies studied. The course ended in a project, where some of the students developed their own application for their robots, from line-following task to making breakfast. One of these, described in (Littman M., 1999), carried out on-line reinforcement learning to complete a task analogous to the pole-balancing-an indication of what is possible at the upper limit of the MindStorms capabilities. Since 2001, Klassner has been teaching introductory artificial intelligence using Lego MindStorms and Russel & Norvig followed in 2003 (Baum D., 2000b and Klassner F., 2001) . Klassner's students make extensive use of the robots and are supported by tools developed by Klassner and his colleagues (Klassner F., and Anderson S 2003). These extend the capabilities of the RCX, making use of the infra-red communication built into the unit (normally used for

quickly build and program sophisticated, mobile, autonomous robots.

can now interact with the environment, and fully independent.

**1.4 Related work**
