The Lego Mindstorms EV3 is the first major revamp of the Lego Group’s programmable robot kit since 2006, and the first to run embedded Linux.
Unveiled at the CES Show in Las Vegas yesterday, with the first public demos starting today at the Kids Play Summit at the Venetian Hotel, the $350 robot is built around an upgraded “Intelligent Brick” computer. Lego swapped out the previous microcontroller for a 300MHz ARM9 processor capable of running new Linux-based firmware. As a result, the kids-oriented Mindstorms EV3 offers far more programmability than the NXT series, which was last updated in 2009, says Lego.