LeJOS

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leJOS is a firmware replacement for the Lego Mindstorms programmable RCX controller. It includes a Java virtual machine, so allows Lego Mindstorms robots to be programmed in the Java programming language. It is often used for teaching Java to first-year computer science students. The leJOS-based robot Jitter flew around on the International Space Station in December 2001.

Contents 1 Pronunciation 2 History 3 See also 4 References 5 External link

[edit] Pronunciation

According to the official website:

In English, the word is similar to Legos, except there is a J for Java, so the correct pronunciation would be Ley-J-oss. If you are brave and want to pronounce the name in Spanish, there is a word "lejos" which means far, and it is pronounced Lay-hoss.

The name leJOS was conceived by José Solórzano, based on the acronym for Java Operating System (JOS), the name of another operating system for the RCX, legOS, and the Spanish word "lejos."

leJOS provides a Java programming environment for the Lego Mindstorms RCX and NXT robots. leJOS also provides extensive class libraries that support various interesting higher-level functions such as navigation and behavior based robotics.

[edit] History

leJOS was originally conceived as TinyVM and developed by José Solórzano in late 1999. It started out as a hobby open source project, which he later forked into what is known today as leJOS. Many contributors joined the project and provided important enhancements. Among them, Brian Bagnall, Jürgen Stuber and Paul Andrews, who later took over the project as José essentially retired from it.

A port to the new Lego Mindstroms NXT is now available (current as of January 2007) as a limited feature alpha release. This is far faster (x15 or so) than the RCX version, has more memory available and many of the NXT features. Significant effort is still required to get the full NXT feature set enabled.

[edit] See also

• List of Java virtual machines

[edit] References

• Brian Bagnall (2002). Core LEGO Mindstorms Programming. Prentice Hall PTR. ISBN 0-13-009364-5
• Giulio Ferrari et al. (2002). Programming LEGO Mindstorms with Java. Syngress. ISBN 1-928994-55-5

[edit] External link

• leJOS home page