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."

Comments

Space Police.

[Construct X]

Though I do like the basic blocks, my favorite set was the Space Police as a kid. How about you guys?

Re:Space Police.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It was the Lego Technics for me, with the (no defunct I think) pneumatic pistons.

As a side note, I really REALLY hate those XYZ-branded Lego sets: the whole point of Lego bricks is that you invent your own stuff. With thos dedicated sets (Star Wars, Jurassic Park and whatnot), the child's imagination is locked in. I reckon that's a major reason why Lego have become much less popular these days. They really should stick to building generic bricks and parts.

Re:Space Police.

[Blondie-Wan]

They do actually make generic bricks and parts in abundance. The licensed sets actually don't use all that many special pieces unique to the licenses, just enough to tie them in. This is as one would expect - it's fairly costly for LEGO to create new pieces for sets, and when they do they try to get as much mileage out of them as possible, which means not doing huge numbers of new parts that are specific to licenses like Star Wars and Harry Potter that they won't be able to use for more than a few years (since the licenses will expire - they won't be doing those sets forever).

LEGO was already declining in popularity when they started doing licenses, and there's plenty of reason to think they've gotten a shot in the arm from them. I do understand the purist view that they shouldn't ever have done licenses to begin with, since LEGO's its own thing that really doesn't need gimmickry to be an excellent toy, but I don't think the licenses have hurt it as much as one might have expected, either.

9-14

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

While this is too young for most of us to participate in

9 to 14 years old? I think many here are eligible...

Re:9-14

[jdunn14]

No, no, physical age, not mental.

Re:9-14

[Excen]

Hell, from what I hear, the average member of the 9-14-year-old is getting laid more than your average /.er.

Segway

[Staplerh]

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!

Not robotic, +1 offtopic but still impressive

[EtherAlchemist]

Lego church from hell

Not quite my style, but damn- this is pretty cool. Not to mention friggin' huuuuge.

What We Really Need Is A Lego Robot That ...

[rewinn]

... 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.

Grown Ups Can and Should play too

[Gypsy2012]

While this is too young for most of us to participate in

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:

• Kids who want to learn
• Kids who want to compete
• a chance to mold young minds and create future evil genius' bent on world domination
• A chance to preemptively teach someone good coding habits before some idiot College Proff who can't code his way out of a paper bag teaches them bad ones
• Fun!
• Competition! (It is like a geek sport)

What you should not expect:

• That these kids know what they are getting into
• That they know near as much as you do
• To be able to build or design it for them (you can only coach them, you can't do it yourself)
• To breeze through without any effort