Pybricks
Next Steps for Pybricks in a CS- and AI-First LEGO Ecosystem After SPIKE Prime (2027) #2548
Replies: 4 comments 7 replies
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Thanks for posting it. I was thinking about askign about this after seeing LEGO's announcement to retirne SPIKE by June 2026. |
The final season (with the now so called "Founders Edition") will be 2027-2028. The new competition mode with different roles (“Driver,” “Operator,” “Technician,” and “Specialist”) sounds to me like concepts from a cooperative first-person shooter. I'm really shocked that LEGO wants to throw everything out the window here. |
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Heh, when I read the FLL announcement, "IRL video game" is the first thing that popped into my mind too. Video game concepts are something that are going to be familiar to most younger people so I can see a benefit to that. I coached a team for a few years and I felt like the students never really grasped the concept of building an autonomous robot because it was a completely foreign idea to them. Having a familiar mental framework to build on can lead to better learning outcomes, so there could be something to that. I think it might have worked better for the individuals on my team anyway. It will be interesting to watch and see how this plays out. |
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The reason I am shocked is not primarily the new concept for FLL – it is much more the fact that the old hardware will become obsolete without a significant transition period. We started with FLL three years ago with our team and it was really difficult to organize the appropriate sets for the group. At least at a public school in Germany, this is a real challenge. And besides, the group only consists of children who enjoy the subject and are interested in robotics and programming – at first glance, I'm not sure if it's really interesting for me to entertain kids who already spend too much time in front of the screen with gamification. |
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I have to admit, LEGO's direction is concerning to me. That being said it's never been easier to get into electronics and robotics, and there are many alternatives out there for a hobbyist. VEX IQ, MakerBlock, Arduino, etc. The only thing that seems rough about this is the potential changing of the competition environment, and also I'm not sure how good the curricula of these other products are. |
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Thanks for opening this discussion and thanks everyone for chiming in! Here are some thoughts with my Pybricks hat on. As trends in education come and go, we strive to stay true to our mission of building a fun and educational robotics platform that works really well, and continues to do so in the future. It's worth noting that the stuff in your hands hasn't fundamentally changed for over 20 years. We still have motors and sensors and some user code to make it come alive. It's the out-of-the-box play experience, the lesson plans, and user expectations that have evolved. There isn't any modern AI in any of these bricks either. That just runs on your phone or in the cloud. On the bright side, that means that all the current teaching trends will work just as well with current and past platforms. Ever since playing with Mindstorms many years ago, I've been wanting to add "smart" functionality like vision, speech recognition, or object classification. But before we could get there, we needed to get all of the fundamentals absolute right: a stable robotics platform to carry all LEGO hubs, motors, and sensors. That's where Pybricks comes in, and we're getting closer to that milestone. But we're a very small team with limited resources, so things take time. For context, big manufacturers have hundreds of people working on stuff like this, while we're building 9 firmwares, a front end, content, and a community, with just 2 people on average. And we give almost everything away for free. We would love to open-source the blocks component too, but it's this component that allows us to keep working on the open source firmware around the clock, while we still can. And we're not abandoning past products either. In fact, we're bringing back Mindstorms NXT (2006) and Mindstorms EV3 (2013), getting them ready for the modern classroom. Almost there! tl;dr: We're working on it! We hope to continue doing so well into the future with support from the community. Thank you! |
So can Spike and Mindstorms really do all that modern Computer Science and "AI" stuff? Totally! Here's a working concept from over two years ago. We're hoping to finally include this in a future version of Pybricks. This is an example of position tracking, but you could just as easily add machine learning, classification, and other forms of AI. camera.mp4 |
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I think it's also fair to say that we'll have no idea what kind of support Pybricks can offer to this new line of smart bricks until someone gets their hands on a set, right? Perhaps it will be possible to upload our firmware still. Another question I had is where all the AI computation is happening. I didn't see any indication that the set comes with a LEGO camera, which means the AI stuff might be happening on a laptop. If that's the case, well, tensorflow.js exists and perhaps could be added to pybricks-code someday. Alternatively, if the new hardware is capable of running tflite-micro and the computation is indeed happening on the robots, that too could eventually become part of Pybricks, although it would probably be a lot more work from my experience trying to get such things running on the ESP32. |
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It's running on the iPad/laptop, as noted above. This is why it will work just as well on current and past platforms like Spike and EV3. I doubt that the firmware can be updated by third parties. All products since a year or two require signing the firmware (for everyone else reading: this means updates are password-protected.) |
I have a set (the LEGO Science one - it has the same electronics). The firmware is signed, so no Pybricks firmware can run on them. They use BLE though, so there is the possibility to remotely control them. There is a discussion at https://github.com/orgs/pybricks/discussions/2356. |
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After SPIKE Prime, Pybricks can be a strong next step for students who want to move from block-based robotics into more advanced computer science and AI-oriented programming. Pybricks uses Python, allowing learners to work with variables, functions, algorithms, sensors, motor control, and more complex robotics projects while continuing to use compatible LEGO hardware. In a CS- and AI-first learning pathway, students can gradually progress from visual coding to Python, data handling, automation, and intelligent robotic systems. MH Intellect can support this progression by combining hands-on robotics with coding and emerging technology skills, helping students build a stronger foundation for future studies in computer science, robotics, and AI. |
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Hi Pybricks team and community,
With LEGO publicly signaling a shift toward CS- and AI-focused learning platforms and the planned retirement of SPIKE Prime around 2027, I wanted to open a forward-looking discussion about what this transition might mean for Pybricks and its long-term role in LEGO robotics ecosystems.
As an FLL coach and robotics educator, I’m seeing increased emphasis on computer science, data-driven logic, and introductory AI concepts in youth programs. Given that direction, I’m curious how Pybricks maintainers and contributors are thinking about the next generation of supported platforms and capabilities beyond SPIKE.
Some open questions I’d love insight on:
This isn’t meant as a request or expectation, it's just an opportunity to discuss strategic direction and to help educators plan responsibly for the years after SPIKE. Even high-level thoughts or constraints would be extremely valuable.
Thanks for all the work you do to keep student robotics open, understandable, and empowering.
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