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MINDSTORMS NXT and yellow marshmallow treats in near space?
 What happens when you send yellow marshmallow treats into near space? And what would happen when they land in the hot Nevada desert? That’s what some 4th grade students from Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA wished to investigate as part of the High Altitude LEGO Extravaganza (H.A.L.E.) project last week in Reno, Nevada.
Under the leadership of Shady Hill science teachers Barbara Bratzel and Jeanne McDermott as well as Chris Rogers and Susan Tse from Tufts University, the 4th grade students used the yellow marshmallows to measure temperature and pressure during the mission.
“We ran some tests on Earth with the students--putting the yellow marshmallow treats in a small vacuum chamber, a freezer, and a solar oven--to simulate the conditions they would be exposed to in space and after landing. The kids then made sketches and wrote predictions of what they thought the yellow marshmallow treats would look like when they returned,” says Bratzel.
The students’ payload carried an off the shelf pressure sensor, a temperature sensor, as well as a "marshmallow-o-meter" where a yellow marshmallow is anchored in a LEGO cage with a MINDSTORMS NXT Ultrasonic Sensor to measure its expansion. The "marshmallow-o-meter" was designed and built by high school student and Shady Hill School alumni Eric Mukherjee. A NXT brick was also used to record the data. The payload was contained in a styrofoam container for insulation and cushioning.
The yellow marshmallows traveled up to 99,570 feet last Tuesday before being recovered in the Nevada desert. The NXT and marshmallow payload is now on its way (via snail mail) back to the students at Shady Hill School. The fourth graders (who will now be fifth graders) will examine the temperature and pressure data and present their findings to their school.
The students are curious to see what happens to their treats. Some students think that the marshmallows will swell up when the pressure is low but shrink back to their original size upon returning to Earth. Some of the students think that they will become wrinkled or that some of the yellow sugar will fall off. Some students think (hope!) that the marshmallows will explode when the pressure is very low.
The students aren’t going to eat any of the yellow marshmallow treats that went into space when they are returned to them, but they enjoyed eating them during their experimentation before the H.A.L.E. launch!
You can learn more about all the H.A.L.E. missions by visiting: http://www.unr.edu/nevadasat/HALE/
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Winners of the LEGO Club Magazine MINDSTORMS drawing contest
 This year it is 10 years ago LEGO MINDSTORMS was first launched, so we want to celebrate the anniversary. As part of the celebration we have run a drawing competition in the March issue of LEGO Club Magazine: LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT “Visions of the Future”, where you should draw your MINDSTORMS robot of the future - how would LEGO robots look like in the future?
We have received well over 3000 fantastic drawings from users from age 6 to early 20's, so it has been very hard to choose the 10 winners! Thanks to all of you who entered a drawing for this contest.
Here are the lucky ones who will receive a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set (#8527).
Congratulations, winners, and thank you for your drawings of future LEGO MINDSTORMS robots!!
The LEGO MINDSTORMS team
Note: all winners will be notified by regular US mail.
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Winners of the LEGO Club Magazine MINDSTORMS drawing contest (#6 to #10)
 Here are #6 to #10.
A big congratulations!
The LEGO MINDSTORMS team
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A NXT controlled digital camera and the longest NXT freefall are launched from the stratosphere!
 At 5:57 am Pacific Time today in the desert outside of Reno Navada, USA, MINDSTORMS robots were launched from a weather balloon into the stratosphere (up to 30KM) as part of the High Altitude LEGO Extravaganza (H.A.L.E.).
Two of the payloads launched were designed by MINDSTORMS Community Partner, Brian Davis. We got a chance to interview him about his robots and this historic event.
How did you get involved with the H.A.L.E. project?
I actually noticed the University of Nevada at Reno balloon missions long before the project was kicked off, and started planning and dreaming of doing a mission like this with the materials I had at hand (namely, LEGO). When the H.A.L.E. opportunity was presented, I jumped at the chance, submitting two payloads to improve my chances of being accepted. To my surprise, both were approved, so I set to work on two very different projects.
Why are you interested in High Altitude LEGO?
Well, since MINDSTORS NXT came along with it's stronger construction and stronger motors, I've been much more interested in outdoor, "all terrain" robots. I built LNE/PackBot as a high-mobility "supertank" for running around in my house and yard (it also handles small steps, curbs, and rough snowfields). I then went on to construct Serenity, a robotic boat. Both of these are "pure LEGO", and I'd yet to make a robot for the air, so... High Altitude LEGO seemed like the next obvious step.
Even more exciting to me is the fact that these robots have to work right the first time, and handle things I don't know about. In the language of space missions, they must be "fault tolerant", and handle all their own decisions, under conditions where there is no possibility of help. These are not robots I can help out of the corner when they get stuck... and that challenge really got my interest.
Is it safe to send LEGO MINDSTORMS into the stratosphere?
Perfectly safe... but I'm having trouble convincing the minifigs that will ride along of that :). Seriously, the NXT can function under the near vacuum conditions, and will function at low temperature (although the payloads do have insulation and heaters to try to keep them warmer than the -60° C temperatures outside). So for the NXT, conditions aren't a major problem.
However, both my payloads have an additional element of risk. Gypsy's primary support is from two large LEGO turntables and studless beams. If those pull apart, or become brittle in the bitter cold and shatter, the payload could fall... and that's a loooong fall! So it will have a "back up tether", a string that should support it if those turntable supports fail. For Lil' Joe the risk is even greater: if anything goes wrong, it will hit the desert floor at something like 300 mph (around 500 kph). So it has been tested a lot... but there's still some risk.
How are you sending your robots into the stratosphere?
The robots are held on a string that hangs below a balloon. Just like you could attach a minifig to the string of a small helium balloon, the HALE mission uses the same idea. Instead of a small party balloon, it uses a very large weather balloon that can lift many pounds. And instead of a minifig or two, the HALE mission will carry half a dozen payloads in addition to GPS and radio equipment. This "infrastructure" (the stuff you need to support the mission) is being provided by the folks at the University of Nevada at Reno, who have experience in this sort of thing.
One of your projects, "Lil' Joe" involves the longest NXT free-fall. How long is the free-fall? Aren't you afraid that you'll risk breaking your NXT?
Lil' Joe is named after Col. Joseph Kittinger who was instrumental in the early days of upper atmosphere exploration as part of Project Excelsior. He is best known for a world record jump from a balloon above 100,000 feet... which in a very small, experimental way I was curious if I could replicate with a LEGO robot. The payload will hang below the main payload string, to be released at high altitude without a deployed parachute (in other words, in free fall). After a short time (nothing like Col. Kittinger's 14 minute free-fall, more along the lines of a 20 to 40 second free-fall) it will try to deploy its own internal parachute, HOPEFULLY descending on it's own. It will contain its own satellite location system, and the parachute & cords are not LEGO... but everything else, from the computer controlling the mission to the motor releasing the parachute to the software running on the NXT and the sensor detecting free-fall will all be "stock LEGO".
The length of the free-fall is actually left up to the robot - it estimates how high it is upon release, and makes a very conservative estimate of the maximum safe free-fall time. Since there are so many unknowns on this, I'm not trying to set a really impressive, multi-minute free-fall record (although I suspect this payload could). First make sure it works, then maybe the next time make it work better. While all this is going on, Lil' Joe will also be logging the accelerations experienced by the payload just before, during, and after the free-fall portion of the mission, to better understand what is happening to a payload under these conditions.
Your second project, the "Gypsy (a.k.a. Nadar 2.0)," will take video and pictures. Why are you taking pictures?
Gypsy is an improved version of a project I put up on NXTlog named "Nadar". The goal with Gypsy (named after a robot from the TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000") is to automate an off-the-shelf digital camera to take both still images as well as video. This way I could get a pre-programmed variety of images and movies during the mission, instead of the typical "one picture every 30 seconds" technique that is commonly employed on balloon missions like these.
Additionally, I wanted to be able to control the cameras' pitch (how far up or down it is pointed) to get images up and down the payload string as well as towards the horizon. Gypsy will be following a complex "script" of commands during the mission ("take 10 photos, tilt to look straight down, take four photos, take 40 seconds of video", etc.), and in addition to controlling the camera, will by logging more than 10 different environmental variables (sound, pressure, light, temperatures, etc.) at intervals of a few seconds, storing these using a "data compression" technique to fit as much as possible into the NXT's memory. If this sounds complicated it is, but when it's all done the program is surprisingly small - about 17k in the NXT. NXT-G can churn out some amazingly compact efficient code if you work with its strengths (My Blocks and wires).
What are you hoping to accomplish at the end of this event?
Primarily, showing that a nearly "pure LEGO" robot can do some very impressive stuff in such a hostile environment. Personally I love the challenge of trying something new, and these two payloads have pushed my understanding and use of the NXT, electronics, and NXT-G much further. There may be better ways to do everything I'm trying to accomplish... but doing it with LEGO allows single individuals or small groups to do this sort of thing at a fairly high level for very low cost.
You can learn more about all the H.A.L.E. missions by visiting: http://www.unr.edu/nevadasat/HALE/
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High Altitude LEGO® Extravaganza (H.A.L.E.) Commemorates 10 Year Anniversary of LEGO MINDSTORMS® by Launching Robotic Experiments to Near Space
 College professors, middle school students and robotics hobbyists will unite shortly after sunrise tomorrow, July 29, 2008, to launch several MINDSTORMS robots into the Earth’s stratosphere to collect data, explore conditional effects of the Earth's atmosphere, and to set a world record as part of the High Altitude LEGO® Extravaganza.
Joining The LEGO Group to support the science experiment are Nevada Space Grant, the University of Nevada-Reno, Energizer and National Instruments to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of the LEGO MINDSTORMS® robotics platform.
The MINDSTORMS robots will be launched from a desert location 30 miles outside of Reno, Nevada, USA into near space on an atmospheric weather balloon that will reach an altitude of more than 100,000 feet (30km). At that altitude the robots will be above 99.9% of the atmosphere. The payloads will be exposed to extreme cold and radiation of near space. The sky looks black and the curvature of the Earth is evident.
Once the weather balloon reaches maximum altitude, it will burst and the robots will parachute back down to the Earth individually or as a group depending on the robot’s desired experiment. Two weather balloons will be deployed to carry the payloads of the robots.
Brian Davis, a part-time professor at Indiana University, contributed two of his custom NXT robots to the experiment. The first, Gypsy (called Nadar 1.0 on NXTLOG), has been programmed to automate a digital camera to take both still and video images while in the balloon. His second robot, Lil' Joe, will attempt a world record for the longest MINDSTORMS NXT free-fall; the robot will detach from the balloon at maximum altitude and fall until a pre-programmed parachute is deployed.
“I love building LEGO mechanisms because the inherent limitations and versatility of the medium offer unique design challenges,” said Davis. “Additionally, since LEGO bricks are infinitely reusable, I can build and test prototypes much faster than I could in other mediums. I’m excited to take my experiments to a new level; I’ve never tried to build a robot that could function under these conditions and function right the very first time. 100,000 feet above ground is no place for a mistake.”
Children are also getting involved in H.A.L.E. FIRST LEGO League Team 90 from Virginia is getting a head start on this year’s annual challenge, “Climate Connections”, by sending up a robot they created that has been programmed to measure and log Ultraviolet radiation as a function of altitude while on board the weather balloon.
“I am confident that the team will learn something about Earth science and Global Warming through this program,” said David Levy, coach of the team. “We are treating our participation as a FIRST LEGO League research project for the upcoming season’s challenge, so I expect that the team will learn how to seek out the advice of experts in the field, come up with their own solutions through experimentation, document their work and have lots of fun in the process.”
Other robots will seek to collect data in relation to ozone concentration, the impact of varying temperatures and air pressure on objects, particles in the air, impact of flight conditions and varying g-forces as a function of altitude.
Energizer provided H.A.L.E. participants with long-lasting Energizer® Lithium AA batteries, which are 33 percent lighter than ordinary alkaline batteries and perform in extreme temperatures from -40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 to 60 degrees C), which are ideal for the conditions the robots are anticipated to experience on the balloon.
You can learn more about the individual H.A.L.E. missions as well as learn how you can track the event live tomorrow by visiting: http://www.unr.edu/nevadasat/HALE/
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MINDSTORMS NXT Summer Sports Building Challenge
 This is a summer where the whole world is busy with sports activities. We want to challenge you to create a robot that can compete in a sports discipline.
You have until Sunday August 31, 2008 to enter your robot.
See the Summer Sports Building Challenge
NXTLOG for more details.
Good luck and go for the Gold!
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LEGO MINDSTORMS Events
July 1 - Aug 31 - MINDSTORMS NXT Summer Sports Building Challenge on NXTLOG
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LEGO MINDSTORMS Press Releases
For the latest Press Releases and Image Library, Click Here
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