Google X-Prize and LEGO Mindstorms Competition
Do you want to know what’s a-buzzing in the Lego Universe these days? The Lego world has been talking about the August 8 update for the Mindstorms competition since, well, August 8. The X Prize Foundation, Lego Systems, Wired’s Geekdad, National Instruments and Google Ink announced the the “MoonBots: A Google Lunar X Prize Lego Mindstorms Challenge”. The said contest is a challenge for small teams composed of children and parents to build and design robots that can perform moon surface simulations.
Senior director of the X Prize Foundation William Pomerantz said “We want students and their parents to understand that they can tackle difficult engineering problems and generate important new ideas regardless of their age or their background—and that they can have fun doing so. This contest is quite accessible for even very young children, but still demands creativity, intelligence, and hard work. It’s a perfect starting point for the next generation of rocket scientists!”
The contest is not just some other kiddie contest because it paves the way for future rocket scientists. The competition, according to the latest press release, will encourage the ones who join the competition to use free software tools from Lego’s Digital Designer, LabView from National Instruments, Google’ SketchUp and YouTube platform on how their robot will be constructed and how the whole team will function. A select group will be hand-picked from the platforms submitted. The chosen participants will be given free Lego components so that the groups can construct a moonscape that will be the contest’s “playing field”. The chosen finalists will then go on ahead and construct and program their robots. Now that’s a leap in kiddie science!
