Lego Mindstorms

Brainy toy

Domestic robots are the future, so they say. But why wait for the future? Start building bots today, with this cool custom robot kit from Lego.

You can use the Mindstorms kit to make anything your imagination can, er, imagine. You can create motorised masterpieces of your own or recreate designs from a loyal army of online builders - everything from a room guard to a robotic golfer.

With light, noise, touch and ultrasound sensors letting your creation make sense of its surroundings, precise control is a doddle. You program the bot's movements on your PC - telling it, for instance, to move forwards until its sensors detect an obstacle. Then you upload your commands to your slave's cyberebral cortex via USB or Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth also means your mechanised minion can exchange programmes with other automatons. What's more, Lego promises you'll soon be able to control your bots with a mobile phone.

Piecing together the parts to create a truly magnificent mechanoid is not for the technically clueless - it takes effort and thought. However, if you're eager to do a little tinkering, there's nothing to stop your dreams of a robot army becoming reality. Exterminate!