Category: Miscellaneous

Just how hard is it to clean up LEGO bricks after play? The answer to this question can vary it seems. There are those who claim it’s time-consuming; from this line of thought comes the concept of brick vacuum cleaners. LEGO made an April Fools’ joke of it, but some builders have actually made them. And then, there’s this “hack” brought up by a mother on the Facebook page “Kmart Mums Australia”, a group that offers some delightful household tips to make things easier for homemakers (it’s not actually affiliated with Kmart despite the name). One Aussie mum, Ange Dobbin, suggested using a LEGO pooper scooper to pick up those pain-on-the-foot ubiquitous pieces.

You probably know this specialized (if borderline extraneous) household tool used to pick up your pet’s waste. Some variants even have long handles so you can remain standing while you scoop LEGO bricks to dump them back in their containers.

Reactions to that post seem to range from high praise to incredulous commentary. Still, plenty of housewives on “Kmart Mums Australia” seem eager to try the LEGO pooper scooper hack. Other even offered their alternatives such as getting a large play-mat and making the kids play with their LEGOs on it; when it’s time to clean up, the mat is simply rolled or folded up (with the bricks brought along) and stored.

That’s all well and good, and certainly cheaper than the DIY LEGO vacuum. But surely picking up LEGO the old-fashioned way isn’t as back-breaking as these alternatives make it seem.

LEGO as an invaluable tool for learning not only applies to people, especially children, but also to machines. It has been proven, if only little by little, with research undertaken by various groups such as Autodesk. This team has been working on developing machine learning capabilities to improve industrial robots. Such industrial robots, like the ones found in car assembly lines, are usually seen as effective in putting things together. But it’s an open secret with tech researchers that most industrial robots, when encountering something not part of its programmed routine, will mess up their work. That’s what Autodesk’s “Brickbot” project is hoping to address.

The San Francisco-based research group assembled their Brickbot, consisting of two manipulator arms and a camera-sensor suite, to do something that would be effortless for a child but complex for a “smart” machine: sorting through components in a container then assembling them into a whole. Guess what the pieces used are. Well, that’s right – it’s LEGO. Click the thumbnail below to see the Brickbot in action.

Autodesk’s co-head researcher Yotto Koga explains the use of LEGO pieces for their machine learning development with Brickbot, saying, “By starting with plastic bricks, we’ve been able to keep the project manageable while still having the freedom to experiment from the design stage all the way to a finished product.”

With the promise being shown by the performance of Brickbot in discerning and putting together LEGO pieces, Autodesk is ready to see how this machine learning potential can be used in actual industrial robots, with future collaborations planned with a manufacturer and a construction outfit.

The risk of having brick-built LEGO constructs being put on exhibit with near unrestricted access at public places is the possibility of it being tampered with. It’s fortunate enough for exhibits like the LEGO Park People in Houston to remain unmolested; other displays like a Duplo statue outside a Gloucestershire toy store that got its head stolen in March, are not as lucky as Houston. Now yet another mishap has taken place in the UK regarding a vandalized LEGO brick-build exhibit. This was in the Royal Hall Theatre in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Featured on display is a brick-built bust of Winston Churchill, with a cigar clenched between his teeth; but not anymore.

This LEGO brick-built bust of Winston Churchill was put at the Royal Hall at the request of the Harrogate Convention Centre, which would itself be playing host to a LEGO event, The Great Brick Adventure, on the August-September weekend.

It was over the first weekend of August rather, when it was discovered that the usual cigar in the Churchill bust’s mouth was gone. Harrogate Convention Centre PR manager Richard Catton has launched an investigation on the theft, positing that it may have happened during a recent awards ceremony that was held in Royal Hall.

In line with the investigation, invitations have been given to all attendees of that ceremony for whoever was responsible to come forward and return the brick-cigar. Doing so would mean no charges will be filed against him with the police.

Catton did manage to find some humor in this occasion, describing the cigar-less LEGO bust of Churchill as “like Yorkshire pudding without onion gravy – just not complete.” He’ll also have other matters to attend to, such as preparations for The Great Brick Adventure at the Harrogate Convention Centre, running from August 31 to September 2.