ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

GLXP-mindstorms-robot AUSTIN, TX – NIWeek (August 5, 2009) – The X PRIZE Foundation , Google Inc., LEGO Systems, National Instruments , and Wired’s GeekDad will announce “MoonBots: A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Challenge” today at National Instruments NIWeek 2009. The new contest will challenge small teams comprised of children and adults to design, program, and construct robots that perform simulated lunar missions similar to those required to win the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, a private race to the Moon designed to enable commercial exploration of space while engaging the global public. full information: http://www.moonbots.org/ Martyn

Remember the post on the Lunar Robotics Challenge where robots simulated a moon mission? I said that no NXT took place, but a reader of our German sister blog Die NXTe Ebene proved me wrong: there was a NXT involved! Not in a robot directly performing the mission in the crater, but as a supplementary system : it ran the device that operated the power line and the rope that pulled the robot from there. This is another nice example where the NXT kit is used in "real world" robotics. Have you heard of other such projects where the NXT played a role in rapid prototyping or in another supplementary way in the academic world or the industry? Tell us!

Last week, the first Lunar Robotics Challenge took place on the vulcanic island of Teneriffa. The aim of that contest hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA) was to retrieve soil samples from a lunar-style terrestrial crater with a self-constructed robot rover in preparation for an eventual deployment on the Moon. Eight teams from European universities took part; although no LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT robot was amongst the contestants, this event nevertheless is a nice showcase also for NXT robot builders on the challenges and actual problems a robot has to face even when trying to cope with such a task that looks simple at a first glance. By the way, a German team from Bremen University finally won the contest.

Okay, here's a little thought experiment. Ignoring getting the robot to the moon (the rocket side of the equation), what would it take to get an NXT robot to win the Lunar X PRIZE? Here is the contest objective described in the simplest terms (taken from the official website): "To win the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a team must successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth." So, a few things: From Ask an Astronomer : The temperature on the moon varies from -387 Fahrenheit (-233 Celsius), at night, to 253 Fahrenheit (123 Celsius) during the day. Because the moon has no atmosphere to block some of the sun's rays or to help trap heat at night, its temperature varies greatly between day and night. This leads to some questions: 1. At what temp will plastic (specifically, LEGO NXT ...