NEW MINDSTORMS CONTEST!!!

NXTLOG Body Forward Building Challenge

"To help celebrate the 2011 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) World Festival in St Louis, Mo. this April, the March-April NXTLOG challenge theme is BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING! Your challenge is to explore the world of Biomedical Engineering and discover innovative ways robots can be used to repair injuries, help people overcome illnesses and disabilities and build healthier, stronger bodies. You can design LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot that can inject vaccines, act as an artificial limb, be a body camera to detect bad cells, a bionic eye, or even remote surgeon! Will your prototype robot be life sized, giant, or imagined on a nano-scale?... What will you make?" 
Go here to read more about it!!

New Mindstorms Building Challenge!

Although it hasn't made it to the news section of the Mindstorms website yet, a new challenge has been released! Your mission? To make a Robotic Pet. For this challenge you are allowed to use non-LEGO elements, such as feathers, fabric, etc (no competitive products are allowed) to dress up your creation. I find it strange because they haven't let us use non-LEGO elements in any the past challenges I can think of. Anyway, here's a link!

MoonBots 20 Finalists

The MoonBots: Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO MINDSTORMS Challenge has now completed the first part of the big contest.

In Phase One 212 teams signed up to be part of the great challenge to create robots for a simulated Lunar exploration using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT sets. Teams have submitted their project proposals for how they would approach a Lunar mission, through a team video, robot designs using CAD programs (for making 3-dimensional constructions) and also fun facts about themselves.

To read more about it, go here.
To see which teams made it, go here.

Monster Chess

Some news has been posted on the Mindstorms website about this awesome, huge chess set. It was made by a group of people with lots of imagination and Mindstorm sets.

In total there are more than 100,000 individual LEGO pieces in the model, (including the board, the robots, decorations to the robots, a move entry system, and a clock). It uses 38 separate NXTs (32 pieces plus two spares, as well as an extra NXT built into each king & queen), 136 color sensors, 16 touch sensors with 4 touch sensor multiplexers, and 102 motors. Each robot runs on rechargeable batteries that last about four games on average. The approximate retail cost would probably be around $30,000.

It is really neat, and I suggest checking it out on the website. Here's a link!

European Robot Sumo Championship

On the 20th and 21st of March 2010 the Robot Challenge and the European Robot Sumo Championship took place in Vienna / Austria.

To read all about it, go here(link)

NXTLOG SMART MOVE Building Challenge Winners

In honor of the close of the 2009-2010 FIRST LEGO League Robotics Season, the March-April NXTLOG challenge was to design a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT transportation device of the future! NXTLOGgers were challenged to look at their communities and discover how people, animals, information, and things travel; and then and improve it through a MINDSTORMS NXT robot design prototype. To see the winners of this challenge, please go here(link)

New NXT Building Challenge

NXTLOG SMART MOVE Building Challenge

In honor of the 2009-2010 FIRST LEGO League Robotics Season and in time for the FLL World Festival in Atlanta, GA in April, the March-April NXTLOG challenge is to design a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT transportation device of the future! Your challenge is to look at your community and discover how people, animals, information, and things travel. Once you know how people and things move in your community, pick one main mode of transportation and improve it through a MINDSTORMS NXT robot design prototype.

Entries must be submitted by April 30, 2010.

What will you make?

Check out this NXTLOG for more details: NXTLOG SMART MOVE Building Challenge

NXTLOG Robotic Arm Contest Winners!

The first NXTLOG challenge of the decade was to design the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotic arm of the future. Hundreds of NXTLOGgers took up the challenge. Entries included bionic arms equipped with gadgets and multi degrees of freedom to suit a super hero, industrial robotic arms designed to sort a LEGO collection by color, and fun robotic arms to play games or take you for a ride. There were many outstanding robots entered in this challenge, but only a few can fill the award categories.
One of the winners was our very own CheshireCat150! Be sure to congratulate her, but also, please visit, comment, rate, and get inspired by all the other entries by searching the tag robotic arm.


Here are the winners:

THE BIONIC ARM AWARD
U.B.A. (Universal Bionic Arm)
Created by: jayko543


DEGREES OF FREEDOM AWARD
mdof-arm
Created by:panagiotisls


INDUSTRIAL ROBOTIC ARM AWARD
Roboarm 11, the Industrial Arm
Created by:mindstormguy1


JUST FOR FUN ROBOTIC ARM AWARD
Mr. Dice Guy
Created by: Tyler9289

and

Knights' Tournament
Created by: CheshireCat150

To see the honorable mentions and more detail on the winners, please click the main picture (also a link) above.