LEGOs and Robots: Let the Competition Begin

Thanks to an article in BusinessWeek, I now know more about LEGOs than I ever thought I would -- including that LEGOs beat out Barbie dolls for "toy of the century."

The attraction of LEGOs seems two-fold: They're simple and they instantly spark the imagination. Plus the colors. The colors of the bricks are very bright. Oh, and they're interchangable. LEGO bricks from, say, my childhood days work with my kid's LEGO bricks. Maybe I'll leave them to him in my will, although I suspect he has something else in mind. (So that's four-fold, but who's counting.)

Of course, what brought LEGOs to the forefront, at least from a technological perspective, was the introduction a few years ago of LEGOs MindStorm Robotic Kits. I was an early adopter of the kit, and built lots of little robots -- until I saw robots built by a 10-year old kid down the block that would chew up and spit out my 'bots. In the end, I sold my kit on eBay. (So does that make me a Web 2.0 kind of guy?)

If you want to get a feel for what I mean and happen to be in Pittsburg PA the weekend of December 2, 2006, drop by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Academy which is hosting the FIRST LEGO League NanoQuest Challenge. Designed for students between the ages of 9 and 14 (see, what did I tell you?), the event invovles LEGO robots, designed and built by 70 teams of young roboticists who will mix it up on a nano-themed game board. Each 10-member team has spent eight weeks performing research and programming its own LEGO MindStorms robot for the competition, which this year is exploring applications of nanotechnology. Teams are judged for: project presentation, robot performance, technical design, and robot programming. The winner of this competition will compete in the FIRST LEGO League World Festival April 12-14, 2007 in Atlanta.

The students are among 80,000 participating worldwide in the eighth annual competition, sponsored by the not-for-profit organization known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Founded by Segway-inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST inspires young people's interest and participation in science and technology. In Pittsburgh, the FIRST competition is hosted by the Robotics Academy, an educational component of CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:50 AM  Permalink