Thursday, April 12, 2007
Randomly Noted The FIRST Robotic Championships: Can your LEGO do that?
Posted by Alejandro A. Leal on Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 10:14 PM
I have to admit, the last time I put together a LEGO pirate ship was, oh, a little over 15 years ago, so I can't even begin to appreciate how kids nowadays can build stuff that actually moves and doesn't just collect dust on top of your night chest. This weekend is the FIRST Robotic Championships, a three-day event that gathers the geekiest, and best, competitors for three individual tournaments, the FIRST Robotics Competition, the FIRST LEGO League, and the FIRST Vex Challenge; all taking place, for free, at the Georgia Dome.
Each one has its own spin on robotics, but I'm most intrigued by the LEGO League. I mean, I remember the old LEGO Technic ads for units you could build and that resembled cars, or boats, or cranes, with functioning parts.
But now, kids can put together robots that obey your every command via software they install on their PCs. Oh yeah, these are middle-schoolers.
From the FIRST Championship press release:
In addition to FRC, the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) World Festival for middle-school students features close to 1,000 students from the top 94 teams around the world. This year’s FLL challenge, “Nano Quest,†requires students to design, build, and program a LEGO MINDSTORMS® robot that manipulates individual atoms, targets medicine to reach a specific problem spot, and operates a space elevator — all on a tabletop playing field.
Are you kiddin'?! Manipulating atoms with a LEGO?!
Well, anything that keeps these kids off any bad habit is a good thing, so I gotta say, more power to them!
By the way, NASA (they sure keep an eye on them from the get-go) is doing a live webcast for the tournaments, check it out here.
Photo courtesy usfirst.org
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