We’ve come across Legos at some point in our childhood, some have simply come to know of its existence when they’ve stepped on one, but it goes without saying that there’s a lot one can make out of Legos. That’s the whole idea behind them anyway. Last year the company launched its lineup of EV3 Mindstorms robots, but instead of building a goofy robot, 12 year old Shubham Banerjee, a seventh grader and resident of Santa Clara, built a braille printer primarily using the $350 Mindstorms kit.
According to Shubham’s father, the child noticed that braille printers usually cost over $2,000 and pondered over the possibility of lowering the price. The Mindstorms kit gave him many of the parts that he needed to build this printer, which works with rectangular calculator paper. The push pin touting module is moved by a robotic arm which pushes it down on the paper to form letters. Capable of printing one letter in between five to seven seconds, at this point in time only one letter can fit on each line of paper. Even though its very much a prototype at this point, Shubham hopes that the design may enable people in developing countries to have access to a printer.
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