Okay, I love Legos, I love robots, I even love robotic Legos, but I can’t decide if the tribute FlexPicker Lego-bot is awesome or just ridiculous. FlexPickers are lightning fast movers and sorters from ABB robotics that put most other industrial robots to shame. A user on Lego Mindstorms, with the handle ‘LegoShep’, recreated a FlexPicker using only Legos and an air compressor. Pretty amazing stuff. We’ve placed the video from our original Flexpicker story next to the Lego version below.

As a novelty the LegoFP (I’m coining the name now) is cool, but as a functioning robot it doesn’t even compare to the original. Where’s the lightning speed, the amazing agility, and the uncanny precision? The truth is that the LegoFP shouldn’t impress you with its abilities, it should impress you with its very existence. Does LegoShep just have too much time on his/her hands? Sure. But the real issue is that an amateur roboticist is straining beyond the limits of consumer products. We need to harness the dedication, and the abundant free time, of do-it-yourselfers like Shep to help build the robotic future.

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