I worked alongside a team in 2014 on a system that classified and counted LEGO. The concept worked but to industrialize the process was pretty challenging. Dealing with parts stuck together was the biggest problem. I love the fact that you went super meta and also made the machine out of LEGO
Agreed. Selling the unit is an option but also selling the design so people can built their own is a good idea too since .. they obviously have legos and want to build stuff (would rather sort than toss). Lego inc. might even be interested!
The LEGO Company should make and sell lego-sorting machines. It should be possible to instruct the machine to sort bricks for a particular lego set, and note which pieces are missing (then automatically create a list of Bricklink).
Are there plans for this? Is there a new version? I'm curious where this has gone in 3 years. Would love to see something like this open sourced (or sold) so the community can build on this.
This is an amazing proof of concept. A very useful machine. Please consider making one to sort nuts, bolts and screws, and get rich selling it to DIYers. I'd be ready to pledge like 100$ if you needed crowdfunding.
This is fantastic! I've had this idea for awhile but just never had time to dedicate to the project. As a "Phase 2", my plan was to keep an inventory database of the detected bricks that were sorted. Then run this database against all available lego building set instructions. So based on the legos someone owns, they can choose a set of instructions and build to completion whatever the thing is. And on top of this, maybe add thresholds where a user can say they want lego instructions for sets that are a certain percent complete. so if i input 90%, it would find not only lego instructions for sets i can complete in its entirety but lego instructions where i have 90% of the bricks available to complete the set. One last thing, you could have a user community for contributing instruction sets. A person could filter on official only instructions or include user generated instructions as well. Anyway, it is a pipe dream of mine. If you are feeling ambitious, maybe it is something you could add on to your already awesome invention.
Wow Daniel, super impressive! I am amazed at the creativity, resourcefulness, and just how cool it was that you did this. I am going to show this to my young son as an example of what he can aspire to with some some creativity and fortitude.
Step one: buy a big pile of legos Step two: build a sorting machine Step three: buy another big pile of legos Step four: sort the pile of legos Love it
It would be the most expensive set you could have. Plus, you did read that it took 2 years to design and developed this, right? So how long do you think it would take to assemble one from a set? Perhaps at least two months? And that would be if you got every moving part/system together right the first time. Great idea though!
I work at a tortilla chips manufacturing company and they use the same technique of a vibrating plate to spread out the chips with before they pass them under a camera to see if there are too browned or burned chips among them.
Woahh!! Crazy stuff, I like. I've dreamt of a machine like this but in which you could feed in specific model(s) plan(s) so that the sorting can be made to segregate a ton-load of pieces by models. This could be a super tool for dads with kids that had way too much legos over the years and now all the pieces are mixed up in the same bin or part of a weird custom made model 😁 ....just an idea for your next project🤣
There is even a port of YOLO for the K210 (Search it on Github). That would be hard to optimize as easily as using a proper GPU on an external computer, but a good fun project. If only we had the dataset ;)
@@JonSmirl Yup, it's a fun toy. I have a few Sipeed Maix boards with the K210. Fun to play around with, but optimizing a model for them is a pain compared to throwing the image over the network sometimes.
David, first off I love this so much you're a genius. Because the pieces aren't all the way sorted, could you put each bucket (category) back into the machine and let it further sort it? In the end, you could be 100% sorted. Just a thought.
Can you put this on Lego Ideas, i know it would never get made but maybe its a way to give lego wake up call of what AFOLs really want . less time sorting and more time building !
I'm totally in love with this project :D Great execution! Will surely feature this in my weekly technology report (even though I saw this a little bit late). Good luck with any following projects!
This would be a fantastic thing to get out to the lego lovers. I am a design and technology teacher with years of experience in sorts of things tech, design, CAD/CAM and even some machine eye stuff, if you'd like some support with the process. I imagine there would be lots of others keen to help you realise your ideas. Just shout out and get a team together. Delegate jobs and lets make this happen.
This is definitely the optimal solution, but a much easier on to build would be one that can identify each piece by weight and then shape if pieces share a weight. I actually might be able to build my version at home and not need a crazy budget nor a crazy time investment.
Do you plan on releasing/selling the dataset/code? I know it took you a lot of work, but that'd be the thing that be the most fun for AI experimentation. I'd love to play around with this, even if it's just to help crowdsource data verification.
Daniel, have you continued to use this machine or made improvements to it? There definitely needs to be an updated video to this (or additional article updates), preferably with more information on the details of its operation.
if i had a 10k $ budget + 1 year of free time all bills paid, i would build the worlds fastest smallest and most reliable handheld lego sorter in existence using pneumatics and an nvidia jetson
Daniel - can you comment as to how you decided on the final buckets / taxonomy? Like, is it all gears in one bucket, and then simple blocks? I'd love to see more on that, if you do a followup video. Thank you!
Can you make the training data available want to make a similar project but I don't really understand how you made the images or what AI you are using from the TensorFlow package.
Hi Daniel. Do you haev something where people can build this or are you selling plans? I'm asking because our community church puts on a lego event each year for a thing called KIDS games. WE have about TEN 20 gallon buckets of legos and we are in need of a sorter. Any possible help here you can provide would be great.
Unfortunately the whole being able to recognize so many parts is thwarted by only separating it into 18 buckets. You need a little over 50 buckets for things to really start getting a organized.
Why do you not use one of the LEGO CAD programs for training? That way you can use 3D models with all possible cameras and lighting instead of relying on 2D photographs.
I wonder how it handles non-Lego; either knock-off bricks or random objects. Also the feeder system requires that all the bricks be disconnected from each other inside the hopper. Would stuck together bricks be treated like a never before seen piece type?
Great job, very cool and technically impressive! I had seen the video from 2017 also, and just recently helped my son organize his legos into 6 categories. I too am motivated to perhaps build a lego sorter. 1x square bricks, 2x square bricks, flat pieces (any size), transparent/angled/architectural bricks, technic (anything that connects, wheels, or wheel hubs), and people/animal accessories. We've found with those 6 categories that it becomes much easier to find items without having to have massive amounts of categories. I think you said 1 piece every 2 seconds, is the limiting factor in your system the mechanical separation or the video/AI processing? It would be interesting if one could develop a more compact and speedy version, by reducing the requirements for accuracy. I thought it would be interesting if one could dump a bucket of lego and resort it into sets one had purchased, based on the parts list. it could be offered as a service at LEGO shows.
