In honor of Alan Turing’s hundredth birthday, Davy Landman, Jereon van den Bos, and Paul Klint built a Turing Machine out of LEGOs. And if you like, you can build one too. You can buy the LEGOS on the web, and the three Dutch researchers have posted the machine’s software to GitHub, the popular code repository and software version control service. “The beauty of the Turing Machine is that it is conceptually a very simple device,” Landman tells Wired. Turing would have turned 100 on Saturday. He was 24 when he described his Turing machine — originally known as the “a(utomatic)-machine” — a device that reads and writes symbols on a strip of tape according to a particular set of rules. In short, it’s a computer. The same basic concepts underpin every computer we use today. To build one, you need a tape, something to move it backwards and forward, and a head that reads and writes the symbols. Landman, van den Bos, and Klint built theirs using a single box of LEGO Mindstorms NXT, a set of LEGOs that includes various motorized parts and a mini-computer.
In this case, the tape isn’t really a tape. It’s a set of LEGO “angle connectors” that act as switches. Each connector can move back and forth between two positions, and these positions represent 1s and 0s. A rotating LEGO beam can move the connectors from position to position, and a light sensor reads the positions. Turing described a machine with an infinite tape, but the Dutch team didn’t have infinite LEGOS. They settled on a tape with 32 positions. The team then used LEGO’s simple computer — known as the NXT Brick — to execute instructions on their tape. They wrote these instructions using NXC, a simple language developed by the MINDSTROMS community, and they built an interface for the machine using the Rascal meta-programming language. In addition to open sourcing the code on GitHub, the team would have liked to include instructions for building the machine itself, but Landman says this hasn’t quite happened yet. “We fear that may turn out to be a larger project than the machine itself.”
He admits that the machine hasn’t quite been perfected yet. But that shouldn’t stop you. After all, this is Alan Turing’s birthday we’re celebrating. It’s an occasion to give your brain a bit of a stretch. Then these guys go ahead and make it even cooler by making full, life-size models out of Lego blocks. With Lego growing in popularity as it has since inception, and with technology and innovation increasing in leaps and bounds, full-size models have come out of the woodwork in recent days. Check out these coolest life-size Lego auto builds to date. Built specifically for the Ford Driving School at Legoland Florida, this Explorer is built completely out of Lego blocks. It sits at the entrance to Ford’s driving school for 6-12 year-olds. No, they aren’t learning to drive real cars. Just electric cars that max out at 3 miles per hour. The Explorer took 22 of Ford’s engineers 2,500 hours to build and used 380,000 blocks. Lego should really makes these kits easier for the kids.
Unveiled at the New York Auto Show, the XC90 shown here is built for the driving school for kids at LegoLand California. This one is life-sized as well, and sits at the entrance as a symbol of both companies’ commitments to safety. The most age-appropriate Lego build on the list is the Cars 2 replica of Lightning McQueen. Built by the master builders at Lego, McQueen took over 2,000 to build and uses 325,000 blocks. That’s a lot of plastic! Edging Lightning McQueen out solely on coolness factor, Ferrari’s Formula 1 replica actually has room for a “driver” to sit in the cockpit. The intricate details down to the complicated F1 steering wheel are all built out of Lego, as it the whole car minus the Pirelli tires. Ferrari’s actual F1 engineering team assembled the full-size life-like model on their own ahead of the 2011 F1 season opener in Melbourne as a promotion of their partnership with Shell. Here’s where the list gets more interesting… The Porsche and Lego teams got together to build this OPERATIONAL half-Lego, half-Porsche full-size car.
Literally half the body of the 911 RSR LMP1 is built out of the plastic blocks, and the car actually drives. A driver wouldn’t boot it, though, as the rough edges of the Lego would tear up the tires, or the tires would tear down the car. Not sure what would happen first. It took their engineers a combined 700 hours of assembly, and approximately 400,000 Lego blocks. This hotrod takes the title, due in part to the fully operational Lego engine, and also due to the builders being independent from large corporations. And they are kids. The car was built using funding from a Twitter plea by two friends who have sent a Lego rocket into orbit already. After fundraising, they used enormous cranial capacity to assemble four compressed air-powered rotary engines out of Lego, along with the slick-looking black and yellow hotrod chassis. The engine has 256 pistons that power the car to 17 miles per hour. It’s far from fast, but no one wants to risk destroying a masterpiece built out of Lego either.
The car, called the Super Awesome Micro Project, is the winner of best Lego car build. Curriculum material, software and teaching support now freely available Discover an engaging way to stimulate your pupils’ learning with LEGO® at primary and secondary and we’ll provide the support you need. With all LEGO Education software, curriculum material and teaching support now available to download for free, there is a wealth of inspiring content and support across a range of subjects, including computing and STEM, at your fingertips.Update: Lego Dimensions is coming to just about every gaming platform in September, and will see the Lego brand assimilate yet more icons from popular culture. We've already seen that Portal, The Simpsons and Back To The Future are among the additional packs planned for the forthcoming toys-to-life game, and at Comic-Con in San Diego, it's the turn of Doctor Who to get its turn in the spotlight. The show will be getting its very own Doctor Who pack, which, judging from both the trailer below and some fresh details emerging from Comic Con (thanks, Gamespot), the Who-centric expansion sounds far more extensive than we might have expected.
For one thing, every incarnation of the Doctor will be playable in the game; you'll cycle through each one as you die in the game. Peter Capaldi, the latest Doctor, will provide his voice and likeness, and will be joined by Jenna Coleman (the Doctor's latest assistant, Clara) and Michelle Gomez (Missy). Cybermen, Daleks and K-9 will be playable characters in the game, and will be purchasable as Minifigs. The cutest thing of all? The TARDIS itself will change depending on which Doctor you're controlling, and there's even a jukebox on board where you can choose your favourite version of the Doctor Who theme. With the game populated with things like that, it's hard not to warm to Lego's latest videogame venture, even if we will have to pay what might add up to a fair bit of cash to acquire it all: the Lego Dimensions Starter Pack will include a Doctor Who level, but there's also a Doctor Who Level Pack which includes a 12th Doctor Minifig, a TARDIS and K-9, and a Doctor Who Fun Pack, which adds a Cyberman Minifig and Dalek model.
Here's the charming new trailer: Lego Dimensions is out on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U on the 29th September. Update 17/06/15: We heard about a month ago that a Portal pack is coming to the forthcoming toys-to-life opus Lego Dimensions, though at the time we had no idea how Valve's mind-bending spacial puzzler would fit into Warner's forthcoming action-fest. The answer is: far better than we could have predicted. All cynicism about the money-spinning properties of these post-Skylanders games aside, this really does look like a great mash-up of Portal and other pop-culture properties swept into Lego's playful maelstrom. So what we get is a brick-built version of Portal, complete with puzzles and a cute version of GLaDOS, but with added Batman, Gandalf and Homer Simpson. It really does look like a lot of fun. Update 11.05.15: Leaked reports that Portal, Jurassic World, Doctor Who and The Simpsons characters are set to appear in Lego Dimensions have now been confirmed - there are pictures and everything.
On Lego's website (as discovered by Brickset), level and team packs, which will expand the scope of the forthcoming toys-to-life game Lego Dimensions, suddenly appeared, providing a first look at what the minifigures will look like. Once again, the information seems to have been leaked by accident; the images below all came from an instruction booklet, published in pdf form and then hastily taken back down again. Fortunately for us, Brickset managed to grab some images from the booklet before it was removed, and, as is the way with the internet, the news has rapidly spread (thanks, Videogamer). Each one seems designed to get geeks in a lather n the internet; there's a minifig version of Peter Capaldi's incarnation of the Doctor, Marty McFly's DeLorean, a miniature Chris Pratt from Jurassic World, and Chell from the Portal games. There's also Homer Simpson clutching a can of Duff, plus Shaggy, Scooby and the Mystery Machine. Brickset also has some images of other characters coming out for Lego Dimensions soon, including Wonder Woman, Bart Simpson and the Wicked Witch of the West out of The Wizard Of Oz.
Original story 05.05.15: Last month, Warner Bros unveiled Lego Dimensions, a Skylanders-like toys-to-life venture which marries physical minifigures and models with a new videogame. Characters from the likes of Lord Of The Rings, Back To The Future and The Lego Movie have already been confirmed, as the first trailer featured such characters as Batman, Gandalf and Wyldstyle. Thanks to some information accidentally published by US retail giant Walmart (and spotted by the eagle-eyed Brick Inquirer), we now know that Valve's classic puzzler Portal is also joining the Lego Dimensions universe. This backs up earlier speculation that the barely-seen protagonist of that game, Chell, was among a number of characters seen in a blurry line-up of forthcoming figures: The listing has since been removed from Walmart's site, but the cat's portal jumped its way out of the bag; thanks to the leaked info, we now know there will be plenty more characters in the offing as well, with expansion packs adding characters from things like Jurassic World, The Simpsons and Scooby-Doo.
Given that Valve isn't exactly rushing to get Portal 3 into shops, the game's appearance in Lego Dimensions could be a welcome stop-gap. As we've previously heard, getting into Lego Dimensions will come with a hefty price tag; the starter pack's set to retail for £99.99, while the additional fun packs, level packs and team packs will cost anywhere between £14.99 and £29.99. All told, buying the complete set of Lego Dimensions stuff announced so far could amount to about £350. In fairness, the clamour over Nintendo's own toys-to-life line, amiibo, has become so over-heated that collecting a complete set of those figures could cost you a small fortune - assuming you're willing to pay the ridiculously high prices sought by sellers on eBay, that is. While the Lego Portal expansion hasn't been formally announced as yet, that it was listed by Walmart as a "Level Pack" - which means it should come with a minifigure, two models and an add-on level for the game - indicates that it'll retail for £29.99.