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Subscribe to RSSTwenty teams of teen-agers from around the country have put homebrewed lunar rover prototypes through their paces in the MoonBots challenge, a spin-off of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize program. And the winner is ... Team Landroids from New Jersey.
The rovers may have been glorified toys, built up from Lego Mindstorms robo-components — but the effort involved far more work than play, as demonstrated in the Landroids video above.
More than 200 teams from 16 countries participated in the months-long competition. Each team, consisting of students ranging in age from 9 to 18, had to design a machine that could navigate a lunar-style course with plastic craters and ledges. The 20 top teams turned Lego kits into actual mini-robots for a simulated mission that included picture-taking as well as the retrieval of plastic rings representing water and helium samples.
Last week, the robots were tested in a series of live "mission webcasts." Judges for the event included private-sector spaceflier Anousheh Ansari, inventor-roboticist Dean Kamen, Lego robot builder Steve Hassenplug and National Instruments' Jeff Kodosky.
The X Prize Foundation, which organized the MoonBots challenge to supplement the Google-backed contest for private-sector lunar landers, announced the results on Wednesday. The Landroids of Livingston, N.J., took the top prize, which includes an expense-paid trip to Lego's world headquarters in Denmark.
This summer has been a wild ride for the Landroids: In June, the team won first place (and thousands of dollars' worth of savings bonds) in the national eighth-grade division of the eCybermission program, sponsored by the U.S. Army. For that competition, the kids worked on a deer-avoidance device that would take advantage of tire-noise sonar detection. Compared to that challenge, building a rover out of Lego blocks for a toy moonscape might sound easy. But it wasn't. The team had to cope with computer breakdowns as well as a robot redesign on their way to the MoonBots finals.
Other top teams in the MoonBots challenge include the Shadowed Craters from the San Diego area, who took second place; and the Moonwalk team from New Jersey and Connecticut, who came in third. Check out this list of other robo-builders who earned special recognition.
"The work these students did this summer was truly spectacular," William Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes for the X Prize Foundation, said in a news release. "The mission very closely paralleled the work our Google Lunar X Prize teams were doing, so we greatly enjoyed watching those technical challenges worked out on a different scale. The new era of lunar exploration is being built on the contribution of people of all ages and nationalities, and it is clear that the MoonBots participants have what it takes to make important contributions."
Next month, the Google Lunar X Prize teams will come together on the Isle of Man for the fourth GLXP Team Summit. The Oct. 4-5 meeting is timed to coincide with World Space Week, one of the big opportunities to celebrate past space achievements and look toward the future.
One future achievement could well be the world's first private-sector landing on another celestial body. Twenty-two teams are chasing $30 million in prizes set aside for private-sector lunar missions. The effort promises to become even more lucrative now that NASA is offering to pay as much as $30.1 million for data relating to lunar lander demonstrations.
"The Google Lunar X Prize has a great deal of momentum now, with an incredible roster of teams and with major agencies such as NASA stepping up to become customers of our teams," Pomerantz said. Will one of those teams land on the moon before the prize program expires on Dec. 31, 2014? If rockets such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 are available to launch those robots toward the moon, I think it'll happen. But what do you think? Put down your prediction in the comment space below.
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Gaetano, What do you get out of insisting this was all your idea?? Did you put the money up? Did you organize any events or conventions? NO. You did none of the leg work. And if you really think that you are the only one (or even the first one) who's ever thought of unleashing a robot army of explorers on the moon (or anywhere for that matter) then you are truly, very naive. Also, it's VERY difficult to read your comments since you write using very poor grammar and even worse spelling.
These kids did some great work and all you can do is sit here and spew garbage about how it was all your idea. Get Over Yourself!!
Gaetanomarano... There is no "proof" on your little web page. Just because you typed it up and have a date on there that says November 2005 does not equate to proof. You'll have to do better. Also, you may want to have someone who speaks English as a primary language go through and edit ALL of your web pages. You clearly don't have a great understanding of the language and it seems to be working against you... Here is a quote from your cute little moon rover page - " Then, I'll try to create a Moonrovers Prize Competition for privates around the world that want to compete!!!" Gaetanomarano, you may or may not have intended for this sentence to be laughable but I just thought I should point out that "privates" is another way of saying genitalia (privates, private parts, etc...). I think it's pretty clear that you meant private corporations but it sure did make me laugh reading what you wrote. And your web pages are full of this kind of thing. So, again, I'd suggest having some English speaking friends read and edit you web pages.
Okay, Gaetano, just for the sake of argument let's assume that Google stole your idea... What do you want out of all this? What is the point of making such a fuss over it and posting a ton of poorly written web pages with lousy grammar, poor spelling, outrageous claims, god-awful colorful text and highlighting???
Is it money you are after? Is it recognition? Assuming that the moonrovers prize competition was actually YOUR idea then what do you want? What is your goal?
And furthermore, why don't you patent your ideas rather than posting them on your UGLY website for anyone to steal???
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. All of your web pages are heavily egotistical and the simplicity and use of bold, italics, and color all suggest you are only out to get recognition. If Google actually stole your idea then you should be thanking them for taking it and actually using it.
But honestly do you really think you will ever be "widely recognized as the first that invented" the lunar prize??
I'm not defending Google. I am simply trying to understand what you get out of stating over and over and over that Google stole your idea. This idea of yours is nothing new. The idea of sending robots to the moon to do exploration is an old idea. The idea of offering awards to private companies as incentive to compete against one another is also much older than 2005. Your webpage and google's lunar prize differ quite a bit in the details. So you could say I'm playing devil's advocate but I'm certainly not "defending" Google, and I certainly do not think that it's right or okay for them to steal people's ideas. I'm just stating that "your idea" has been around longer than you think. You are definitely NOT the first one to propose such a thing.