What is the best robotics kit for a beginner science major?

[Animastryfe]

I want to buy a robotics kit for something to do over the summer. Virtually all of the posters in this thread endorse the Lego Mindstorms NXT set, but the OP in that thread was specifically asking for a robotics kit for a five year old. However, I am impressed with the kit from what I could learn about it on its website.

I'm a freshman physics major. I did not have any programming experience prior to this year, but as I am doing research with a professor I am learning C and Python (by myself). I have absolutely no problem with learning some advanced things, but I would like the kit to be simple enough at first for someone with no experience in robotics. I also don't want a kit that requires me to make the parts, but I haven't seen a kit that requires that yet so this probably won't be a problem. Ideally, the kit should be newbie friendly enough for a science major who doesn't have much (or any) experience with such things, but advanced enough for a solid few months of work.

As I am a total beginner, there are vast amounts of things that I don't know that I don't know. Please ask questions or disabuse me of any misconceptions that I have.

I'm currently looking at these kits, but other suggestions are welcome:
Trossen Robotics
Robot Shop
http://www.vexrobotics.com/products/
Lego Mindstorms NXT

 

[Mech_Engineer]

I would look at a hobby-grade robotics kit, rather than Lego Mindstorms. A company I have used in the past that carries a ton of advanced professional-grade robotics components is http://www.parallax.com/" , you should check them out.

 

[story645]

We use legos and vex kits for the newbies in our robotics club, but I'm also impressed with the arduino, so you may want to check out robots compatible with it. Another option is the icreate dev platform, but that ends up being mostly programming. Do you have a specific aim?