Legos have been around for a long time. Invented back in 1949, the company has come a long way with its single building blocks that come tons of different colors. Besides the blocks, the company also puts out mini-figures and gears that people can use to build more complex structures where some can even accomplish tasks. Most of what is built with the blocks include cars, buildings and robots that can move on their own. Once something is built, it can be taken apart again to use for parts on something else.
Legos have become quite popular now that the company has licensed, collectible kits that you can build that resemble scenes from movies like Batman, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. In recent news however, it was not about how old the company is or what movie they will be turning into the next collectible kit. It was more about a machine that a teenager built out of legos that can seemingly type out braille on to sheets of paper.
The teen, who is just 13, will be the youngest American to get venture capital as Intel announced they would invest in his company. The young are getting smarter and according to reports, Shubham Banerjee had a moment right after talking to his parents about how blind people read. His parents did not offer much help, but did point him to Google where he read about braille, the blind and tactile writing systems.
Banerjee was surprised at the cost of the printer and the weight of them. The cost, somewhere near $2,000, is way to high for blind people in developing countries to afford. He decided that has part of a school project, he would build a printer. One that was going to cost less, be much lighter and become a very simple way of allowing visually impaired people read. His first plans is to release a printer built with Lego Mindstorms EV3 robotics kit. He believes that he can make a lightweight model that will sell for just $350.
As soon as his prototype was seen as a working printer, he founded Braigo Labs, where the name includes a little of Braille and Lego. His initial investment was from his dad and was just $35,000. With that, the teen thought he was on top of the world until Intel called and said they would like to pump more money into his business. Intel claims that the teen is solving a problem and wants to do what he can to solve it. Intel is hoping to have a new printer lined up for blind folks by the summer of this year.