RIMM's LEGO Machines Test Blackberry

LEGO - my - Crackberry writes "Matthias Wandel is an engineer at Research in Motion (RIMM), the company that makes the Blackberry. What did RIMM turn to for testing the antenna reception of one of its 900MHz devices? LEGO machines. Specifically a device made of LEGO that could rotate a Blackberry about its horizontal & vertical axis in a pre-defined pattern."

RIM

[What'sInAName]

That really *is* Research In Motion!

Cool idea, but I wonder how long the device would hold out. LEGO isn't exactly designed for industrial apps. On the other hand, it is designed for small children, who provide perhaps the toughest test environment imaginable!

Re:Surprised?

[aadvancedGIR]

I think the hardest part of using lego for that kind of work is to have the beancounters accept the expense as work related. Usually, I had to use my own personnal stock when I needed to hold prototype boards together.

Lego is for kids.

[Ihlosi]

Real geeks use(d) Fischer-Technik. More possibilities, less colors. I built robots with it 20 years ago ...

Lego ROCKS!

[ScrewTivo]

Got my 11 year old a Mindstorm set. It is incredible both in the mechanics and software. I was at Disney World and saw the robotic plastic injection machine and the display panel looked just like the Mindstorm programming interface.

Not to diss what RIM has done (old lego set) but I am surprised that we don't read more about Mindstorms at work.

Re:RIM

[aadvancedGIR]

It's simple, once you're OK with the prototype, simply superglue it and it will be almost unbreakable.

other lego research

[rucs_hack]

At my university we build robots out of lego to test pathfinding software.

It's cheap, and it can house the motors/circuit boards and stick together under a bit of stress, its perfect.

Meccano is good, but it can take longer to assemble. That's more of use for robots that need to withstand a lot more stress, such as arms.

Obligatory Mythbusters comment

[hugorxufl]

Come to think of it, I'm surprised one of the Mythbusters haven't used Lego robots in their test rigs. Maybe they're biased toward combat-capable machinery.

Re:The guy's a very busy genius

[Valacosa]

He is a busy genius - I stumbled across his site when I was told someone mapped the tunnel network below the University of Waterloo. And he did.

IMHO, the coolest thing he ever built was converting a scanner into a digital camera [sentex.net]. People, if you have a few free minutes, check his site out. Lots of cool stuff there!

Re:Surprised?

[FuzzyDaddy]

I agree that it's the logical choice, but it is surprising - and cool. One of the biggest challenges of being an engineer is realizing when there is a simple solution to your problem - especially when the thing you need was made for another purpose.

Case in point - years ago I worked in a lab making diodes on 4" GaAs wafers. Unlike silicon, GaAs is very fragile, and the wafers kept breaking. The problem was that you had to immerse them in beakers, and when you let go of the wafer in the liquid, it would slide sideways, go "tink" against the edge of the beaker, and split in two.

So we looked at the bottles that the processing chemicals came in (the main one was photoresist developer). On the bottom of the plastic bottle it indicated it was polypropylene. So we went to the local KMart, and bought some tupperware that was the same material and the right size and shape. Then, when we dropped the wafer in, it bounced off the side, and we stopped breaking them.

Re:Lego ROCKS!

[rsun]

A couple of jobs ago I used a mindstorms set to debug a hardware/software bug in our network controller - every once in a while when the fiber was unplugged things would go haywire. It got really tiring unplugging the cable dozens of times to reproduce the problem so I rigged up a robot to do it for me and let me know when the error had occurred. Alas, the company went belly up before I got the chance to get them to pay for the Lego....

Re:Surprised?

[GooberToo]

That's like when NASA put in a request for a convertable GTO (sports car) to pull heavy lifting body designs (shuttle is a lifting body) and film them for research. Of course it was denied. They then put in a request for something like a "aerodynamic research tow vehicle with film platform" and it was approved. And thusly, the lifting body concept was proven and established.

Lego's are awesome

[jbeaupre]

I bought some for my last job for surgical device prototyping. Sometimes to mock up mechanisms or as test stands. But a few times we made working devices. No, never used on humans. Lego's are fun, but not FDA approved.

Is there a commercial version of Lego?

[TomRC]

Seems like there's a market for a modular rapid prototyping kit, that gets past a few of the Lego limitations.

You'd want it to be stronger - with modular connections that lock together rather than relying on friction joints at any point in the structure.

You'd want more flexibility of orientation - e.g. parts that can be connected at any planar-rotated angle with respect to each other, and then locked at that angle.

You might prefer to give up the ability to completely re-use parts, in exchange for being able to easily cut parts of the precise length needed, from longer stock - no need to fit your design to the limited lengths available, also reducing the number of fewer component types you need to keep on hand, and eliminating the problem of needing "just one more part".

What else?

Re:The guy's a very busy genius

[orgelspieler]

I first found him while I was looking for homemade pipe organs. There are very few people who have completed such an undertaking. His isn't the best or biggest, but it's the only one I know of that is homemade to to such a minute degree. Most hobbyists use used pipe organ components somewhere.

My favorite works of his are the marble kinetic sculptures.