**2.2. Robotic arm with LEGO MINDSTORM NXT 2.0**

The Lego Mindstorm is a programmable robotic kit developed by Lego® and introduced for the first time in September 1998. The kit Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 provides basic pieces to construct mini-prototypes of robots by means of the assembly of mechanic plastic parts such as wheels, gears and bricks, among others, and electromechanic parts such as motors and different kind of sensors; finally, the robot prototype is programmed in an interactive way. The robots constructed using the Lego Mindstorm kit can simulate the same functionalities as real robots of this kind.

The robotic arm assembled for this project has a degree of freedom; its design is based on a parallel mechanism, and its motion is restricted only to vertical movements (up and down). The NXT brick is the central unit processing for programming robot task using LabVIEW Robotics which is the same graphical language used for programming the mobile robot DaNI. The communication between the NXT module and the PC is via Bluetooth.
