About Moonbots
This Lunar Landroids website is a subsidiary blog site of the official landroids.org website, created specifically to document Landroids’ progress on the 2010 Moonbots challenge.
ABOUT
The Moonbots is an international competition that challenges teams of maximum 6 members (3 of which ages 9 to 18) including one adult team captain, to design LEGO robots that perform simulated lunar missions. This is the younger version of the Google Lunar X PRIZE. A total of 212 teams from 16 countries around the world has entered into this competition. These countries include USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Belgium, South Africa, Poland, Australia, Bulgaria, India, South Korea, Macedonia, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Jamaica, and Columbia.
Sponsored by Google Inc., LEGO System, National Instruments, and Wired’s GeekDad, this is a free competition to stimulate learning of robotics and team building while excite young adults about the moon race and lunar exploration. It encourages the uses of Google SketchUp, LEGO Digital Designer, National Instrument’ LabView, and Google’s YouTube as platforms to present and simulate how the teams will design, build, program and operate their robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS robotic kits to go to the moon and perform a series of required missions.
The Challenges
The contest is conducted in two competition phases:
Phase One is from April 15 to May 28, 2010. Each team must submit a robot design proposal, a video essay on the reason for lunar exploration, a team webpage location, a team photo, and team blog or video blog entries. Judging will be based on:
- Originality and creativity of the Robot Design Proposal;
- Originality and creativity of the Video Essay;
- Scientific and technical merit of the Robot Design Proposal;
- Artistic merit of the Video Essay.
Phase Two is from June 21 to August 22, 2010. Twenty (20) finalist teams was selected and given a LEGO Moonbots mission field to proceed with the robot design. Submittal include the robot design and construction using LEGO and Mindstorm NXT, a 3 to 5 minutes long team documentary video, a team blog or video blog site, and a 3 minute live webcast of the robot missions. Judging will be based on:
- Originality, creativity and technical merit of the Team’s Blogs, Video Blogs, and Team Documentary;
- The quality of the Team’s Blogs, Video Blogs, and Team Documentary; and
- The Science Mission Score achieved during the Live Mission Webcast.
The Prizes
The Phase 1 winners will be given a $450 worth of LEGO kit to build the mission field for the Phase 2 challenge.
The Phase 2 grand prize winner will win a trip to visit the LEGO headquarter in Denmark, plus a $1,300 worth of FRC or FTC registration kit. The 2nd Place winning team will receive an iPOD for each team member plus a $1300 FRC or FTC registration kit. The 3rd prize winner will receive a $1,300 FRC or FTC registration kit.
The Judges
The best part of the competition is the opportunity to present the team’s progress and achievements to the Moonbots expert judges, who are:
Anousheh Ansari – the first female private space explorer, founder of Prodea Systems.
Steve Hassenplug – a Master LEGO robot builder with LEGO MINDSTORMS and a developer of the MINDSTORMS NXT.
Dean Kamen – The Founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an inventor and physicist.
Jeff Kodosky – Co-Founder of National Instruments, aka the “father of LabVIEW”.
The Blogs