Moonbots

Excellent news for kids 9 and up, the Moonbots competition has lowered its age requirement from 13 to 9! I guess they realized, that since FLL is 9 to 14, setting the age requirement to 13 was too limiting.

So dust of your Mindstorm robot, and get ready for a fun challenge while you are waiting between your FLL season! All you need is one adult and 3-5 kids to start a team.

This challenge is basically a simulated lunar exploration, similar to those required to win the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, except it is using the Lego Mindstorm robot plus video essays, team website and running the Robot game through a Live Webcast!

The competition has two phases, phase one requires your robot design documented in digital form and showing off your creativity and video blogging. All this must be done before May 28 (only 22 more days left!). From Phase one, 20 winners will be selected to participate in phase two. The 20 winners selected from phase one, each team will get a robot kit and the game table pieces so they can participate in the game challenge. During Phase two the 20 teams are also required to upload video blogging (min. once a week)from the robot as it explores the moon! Near the end of phase 2, the teams will run the robot game through a live webcast. The robot game round is 3 minutes long, and a max of 350 points can be scored on the game table, but you only get ONE shot at it.

The main difference between this game and the FLL game is that you have to mount a video camera onto your robot, and have your robot take picture or video while it is on a mission. Also, sensor wise, you have a wider selection of different sensors that you can use, as long as it is from LEGO or HiTechnic !

The grand prize is a free trip (3 days/2 nights) for the team to visit the Lego Campus in Denmark, plus FIRST team registrations for the next season.

For more info, visit www.moonbots.org