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The theme for FLL 2011 is Food Factor; details of the challenge for the tournament will be released on the 2nd of September, says the announcement on the FLL website. Here is an abstract of this year’s theme from the website: Can FIRST® LEGO® League teams improve the quality of food by finding ways to prevent food contamination? In . . . → Read More: FIRST Lego League 2011: Food Factor Challenge – Keeping Food Safe I had posted these “futuristic” thoughts a while ago. But looking at this NY Times article about Google cars that drive themselves, it appears that the future is here. The article talks about a car project at Google, and Google’s experiments on real roads: The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret . . . → Read More: Google Car That Drives Itself An interesting presentation – How FIRST Robotics can influence students and play a critical role in reshaping school education. blip.tv . . . → Read More: Why Schools Should Have A Robotics Team Over 140,000 children are participating in this year’s FIRST Lego League (FLL) tournament, comprising 14,725 teams from 56 countries. That’s almost a 14% growth over last year’s participation, as the chart on the FLL site shows. Starting from the pilot tournament in 1998 in which 210 teams from 2 countries participated, FLL has grown steadily across the . . . → Read More: FIRST Lego League 2009: 14,725 teams from 56 countries First things first…. What is FIRST? FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Here are some quotes and pictures from the FIRST website. Here is an interesting creation using Mindstorms NXT, a Rolling-Orbital-Bluetooth-Operating-Thing (ROBOT) as its creator calls it. Spherical Robot 02 (YouTube) This project uses two NXT controllers: one inside the “thing” and an external one that acts as the remote control. The two controllers communicate via Bluetooth. The external controller is also uses NXT motors that are very cleverly . . . → Read More: A Remote-Controlled Ball? It's A Spherical-Robot Based On Mindstorms NXT I found this cool video demonstrating how to build a Wii-like remote control using Mindstorms NXT sensors. This project uses the compass and acceleration sensors that are not part of the standard NXT kit, but can be purchased separately. RobotC is the language used for programming. Click here to view it in the original page if you can’t . . . → Read More: A Wii-like Robot Controller Using Lego Mindstorms Sensors New to Lego? Curious about gears, pulleys and stuff? The Lego Constructopedia has cool graphics that illustrate how you can use gears and pulleys to do various things. Take this quiz and try to solve the problems before you click on the answers. 1. How do you make two pulleys connected by a belt to turn in opposite . . . → Read More: Lego Constructopedia – A Gears And Pulleys Quiz These are some of the robots that you can build with the NXT kit. The Humanoid – Alpha Rex Alpha Rex is very sophisticated. He can walk, talk, hear, see and feel! You can visit Alpha Rex’s Home to learn all about him. The Animal (Scorpion) – Spike [This post is part of the article Robotics With Lego Mindstorms.] Robotic Feeler Imagine that you are blindfolded and had to feel your way around a room just using your hands. This is exactly how a robot can navigate itself if it had to rely only on touch sensors. In this case, the touch sensors are really like . . . → Read More: Lego Mindstorms NXT – The Touch Sensor |
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