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LEGO Junior Robotics Competition This Weekend
Neuropol writes "CNN tells us our favorite locking building block company, LEGO, is hosting a Junior Robotics Competition in Atlanta, GA this weekend. The event expects to pit hundreds of grade schoolers ages 9-14 against each other in a 9 task Olympic Style face-off with each teams robot. Twelve year old Taylor offers 'NASA works with a lot of robots and when you build a robot you need to know what goes in it,' says Taylor. 'And when you're working with FIRST LEGO you have to figure that out -- how to set stuff where it needs to go.' While this is too young for most of us to participate in, it's great to see the attention being focused on such a potentially great generation of robotics developers."
Though I do like the basic blocks, my favorite set was the Space Police as a kid. How about you guys?
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While this is too young for most of us to participate in
9 to 14 years old? I think many here are eligible...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I thought this was kind of neat. From the CNN article:
The LEGO competition is the brainchild of Dean Kaman, inventor of the Segway scooter. It's part of his FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship -- a global robotics competition for middle school and high school students.
Good on him, I haven't heard much of him since his vaunted Segway scooter. That being said, I think that it'll help more people 'think outside of the box'. Imagine if you had started doing this sort of thing between the ages of 9 - 14; you'd either burn out and be sick of it, or you'd continue to build on your knowledge until your in university and can really compete/innovate!
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
Lego church from hell
Not quite my style, but damn- this is pretty cool. Not to mention friggin' huuuuge.
R(k)
... builds other Lego Robots, subject to radio'd requests.
Then we can just ship it to Mars with a big pile of Legos. The Mars Lego Builder would build a Mars Explorer according to blueprints fromt Earth, and send it off to look around. When an unexpected event trashes the Lego Explorer, the Mars Lego Builder constructs another Explorer that allows for the event. Repeat until done.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
See here http://www.lego.com/eng/starwars/videogame/default .asp?bhcp=1 for a link to a videogame advertised in my local shopping centre - what the hell is the world coming to?
FIRST is an organization that also sponsors the FIRST Lego League. In FIRST, high school teams are given six weeks to build a robot designed to play that year's game, which is unveiled at the beginning of the six weeks. Teams must design, build, and program their robots to compete.
More info at: The official FIRST site and Wikipedia
Dude you do know that those exist dont you ;). .... Yes i do have far too much free time . .
Well and if there is a direction you dont have then you can use a swing hatch type piece and make angles .
The creativity comes from using those special bits for other purposes
Hell i just made a walking AT-ST with some mindstorms a couple of weaks back (i then changed it to the AT-AT as i was running short on legos)
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
NOT TRUE! I coached a FLL team this year, it was a blast!
You can be involved by doing that. Our team made it to the State Competition but not beyond that. These kids do this all over the world, and the one the article is talking about is the world competition that is the best of the best of the best.
It is very cool stuff, the kids learn so much and do so much. I had 3rd graders writing algorithms and learning about code reuse and project management. Not to mention quite a few physics concepts.
Check out High TechKids.org
What you should expect as a coach FLL Coach:
What you should not expect:
Dean Kaman is doing more things. He just launched his Vex Robotics. This is the robotics kit that is a step up from LEGO Mindstorms. Essentially based on Dean Kaman's FIRST competition, this is a commercialized manufactured robotics kit.
I've just about finished assembling my first robot with the kit, and the kit is what I've been waiting for since I could solder stuff together (no soldering required). It's real metal parts and real radio control and soon real programming. Radio Shack is the exclusive outlet for these, and they sell all of the sensors, gears and wheels, motors and other parts as individual components, so one can upgrade their robot as much as necessary.
The CNN article implies that this competition was "invented" by Kaman...Botball is a much more challenging competition, has been around for a number of years, enjoys NASA sponsorship, and makes use of multi-controller robots (including the incredibly versatile, open-source Handy Board controller). Plus, Botball is open to high-school students as well as middle school.
Reading TFA, you'd think ONLY the Lego competition was going on, but that's about 1/3 of it.
Quoting from TFCNNA:
"Joining some 25,000 high school students who compete separately, hundreds of budding mad scientists from ages 9 to 14 each hope their mechanical monsters will win an award."
The Lego League is obviously for ages 9 to 14, and the other two competitions (described below) are for the older high school students 'who compete separately.' Thus, the CNN article is all about the hundreds of younger kids, and only a bare mention of the thousands of older kids who make up to two-thirds of the competition (not to take anything away from the LEGO league).
Putting on my imaginary Reporter cap, the first thing I'll do is shamelessly steal text from the usfirst.org website:
"FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multinational non-profit organization, that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today.
FIRST was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter"
There are/were THREE things going on at this event:
The original FIRST Robotics http://www.usfirst.org/
These are given standard controllers and motors (much like R/C radios with high-power servos), and the kids have to find and make the frame, wheels, arms and other mechanical parts 'from scratch'.
FIRST LEGO League http://www.usfirst.org/jrobtcs/flego.htm
This is based on the Lego Mindstorms robotics kit(s)
Those two competitions have been going on for several years.
And this year for the first time:
FIRST Vex Robotics http://www.usfirst.org/Vex/
Vex Robotics is a kit sold at Radio Shack for $299 It's very much a complete kit with controllers, motors, wheels, frame pieces, nuts and bolts. Of course anyone can buy it but one of the requirements for the Vex teams is that they ONLY use parts from the Vex kit. IIRC, there were four Vex teams, and each team got two Vex kits to make their robot with.
Of course, the greatest shame is that I didn't go and have no excuses for not going. But at least I attend the local Robot Club meetings (and a shame there's no mention of this event on the website, especially since it's the FIRST HIT when googling for robot club):
(shameless plug)
http://botlanta.org/
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