Since Lego building blocks became programmable in September, hackers have gravitated to the kids' toy, breathing carbon life -- and their programming dreams -- into moving, crawling, light-sensing Lego robots.
No wonder then that the Lego world is abuzz with LegOS, a new open-source operating system for the Lego robots.
"What [LegOS] is doing is exposing the full power of the processor to hackers," said Fred Martin, a research scientist at MIT's Media Lab.
The Media Lab was the breeding ground for the Lego Mindstorms product. Martin worked on the technology that led to the robots, his team's work sponsored by Lego.
"They're definitely blazing new ground," Martin said. "Basically, [LegOS is] letting you get at the guts of the RCX and do whatever you want." RCX stands for Robotic Command Explorer and is the name of the computerized brain of the programmable Lego sets.
LegOS is the brainchild of Markus Noga, a programmer and robotics enthusiast based in Europe. Although he could not be reached for comment, his LegOS Web page explains his intentions.
Noga describes his creation as an independent Lego Mindstorms operating system offering hackers' favorite computer candy: pre-emptive multitasking, dynamic memory management, and native access to the robots' infrared communication functions, motors, and sensors.
Such features may not be for kids, but programmers will likely have a heyday.
LegOS' mission, according to Noga, is "to unleash the RCX's full potential by providing a lightweight, comprehensive native mode kernel and standard library."
By replacing the Lego "firmware" that comes with Mindstorms, programmers are able to express themselves to the Lego brain in their language of choice, such as an assembly language speaking directly to the hardware or C++.
For decades, Lego construction sets have provided snappable, stackable plastic bricks for kids to create landscapes, buildings, or whatever their imaginations produced. Mindstorms adds one computerized brick -- Lego's RCX microcontroller -- and a set of software that is snapped together on a PC screen and transmitted to the smart Lego piece with an infrared beam.
