Today is going to be Modular Construction set day, because I am going to be celebrating the launch of my sixth book, which is about Lego Mindstorms EV3. I’m going to talk about the MOSS Robot Construction System, which, unlike the Mindstorms kits, require no programming.

The MOSS Robot Construction Kit appears to be designed for the Minecraft generation, and not for the Mindstorms. You can see the most of the model constructed here was with cubic pieces, similar to the Minecraft game. What you might not be able to tell from the image is that certain colors of the sides of blocks do different things. The yellow can send power, the blue sends data, the green receives data, and the purple passes through power and data.

These blocks hold together with the power of magnets, and little metal balls help with this. You will notice that it is easy to make cars and other types of robotic toys, and it is possible to take control of your creations using an infrared distance sensor.

You can pre-order the Basic Builder Kit for $149.95 and the Advanced Builder Kit for $399.95. I’m not certain when they will ship, but I would like to see how this Modular building kit will affect the rest of the toy world.