Designers everywhere continue to wow us with LEGO creations like
robotic arms and fully functional printers, and now a group of
engineers is even working on using the bright stacking blocks to
grow bones! In a video created for Google’s Science Fair, a team
at the University of Cambridge shows us how they are working on
the production of fake bone, and how LEGO Mindstorm cranes are
some of the most crucial tools in the process. “To make the
bone-like substance you take a sample, then you dip it into one
beaker of calcium and protein, then rinse it in some water and
dip in into another beaker of phosphate and protein – you have
to do it over and over and over again to build up the compound,”
explained Daniel Strange, a PhD Engineering student who works on
the project. Rather than hire, say, a student researcher to
stand over a set of beakers, delicately repeating the same
dipping action for days on end, the team instead constructed two
programmable cranes from a Lego Mindstorm Kit. As Physorg
reported, Lego Mi