LEGO Turing Machine Is Simple, Yet Sublime
Two researchers in the Netherlands helmed the construction of a LEGO Turing machine, a quirky manifestation of the classic computer science concept first devised by Alan Turing in 1936.
The device, built by Jereon van den Bos and Davy Landman using a single LEGO Mindstorms NXT set, is one of the most impressive — and simple — attempts we’ve seen at building a physical Turing machine.
“Alan Turing’s original model has an infinite tape,” write the researchers, “but LEGO had a slight problem supplying infinite bricks. So we chose to fix our tape size to 32 positions.” The Turing machine was a purely theoretical concept. Several attempts at crafting LEGO Turing machines have been made in the past, with varying levels of success. And a fanciful mechanical Turing machine built by Jim MacArthur was unveiled in 2011 at Maker Faire UK.
