This seems a lot like what they did in the 17th cent. with the passing around of manuscripts before publishing--- just an observation.

For my thesis project we are using lego mindstorms to build a maze travelling robot.

The lego RCX Invention system is really cool, but somewhat pricy. The default lego programming language is a drag and drop, connect the boxes type of graphical languages so kids could play with it all day after you do a quick presentation.

If you wanted to get more control check out BrickOS (C compiler) or Lejos (Java compiler).

Cheers,
Chris