Sunday, October 10, 2004
Building Blocks with Memory
Hayes Solos Raffle and Amanda J. Parkes, at MIT, have come up with an amazing concept construction set. Imagine building blocks with a memory. That's the basis behind Topobo. This collection of blocks has passives (just connectors and shapers), and actives (parts that move, store moves in memory, and have motors). Whenever using an active piece you attach it to other pieces, move those pieces while connected to the active, record the movements, and once your construction is finished, you play it all back. A great tool for teaching movement and programming concepts. The site has videos (a bit large for dial up connections--smallest is about 4 Meg). Unfortunately this is currently only a concept work and is not in commercial production at this time. If this brief description didn't make sense, go to the site and see this for yourself.
# posted by Joe @ 5:50 PM 
