LEGO MINDSTORMS at Google Science Fair 2012

The Google Science Fair is already over and the winners have been announced at the awards ceremony held Monday, July 23rd, 2012 in Palo Alto, California!!
LEGO, a proud partner of this awesome scientific event was present and brought along some cool MINDSTORMS robot for the finalists to play with.

Featured this year was the work of Vassilis Chryssanthakopoulos better know to us as NeXTSTORM or the Crazy Greek Robotic Expert ;) His Real Steel Boxing robots where there along with an army of "Muhammad Ali" (soon to be a bonus models available on the MINDSTORMS page).

He is also the brains behind one last challenge for the finalists:

The Fusion mission:

Leading scientist working for the United Nations have found out, that a fusion of selected rare metals can create a new substance and commodity that more than doubles the performance compared to using the metals individually. These metals have now been discovered on an - until now - unknown planet – where no human – but ONLY robots can function. To create the new substance, the three teams have to fusion 3 different visible metals in the fusion power plant on the planet. No team can collect all types of metals with a single robot due to their different nature and no team can trigger the fusion themselves – so they have to cooperate…

Watch the video and if you haven't figured it out, I'll tell you a bit more about the Fusion... after the break

The Fusion mission consists of: Construct tools > Drive using MINDdroid > Collect vital elements > Share elements using your robots with the rest of the teams > Set the mixed outcome in the fusion machine > Close the lid > Trigger fusion simultaneously with the rest of the teams... and finally collect the fusioned "giveaways" (LEGO keychains)

The finalists around the Fusion mission mat

Finalists playing with the Real Steel Boxing robots

Camilla from LEGO Mindstorms explains the "Muhammad Ali" fonctions

Finally, don't miss the review of the bright young winners on the Mindstorms News website where you'll aslo find a link to sign up now for next year's Google Science Fair !!!

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