After winning the 1^st place prize for the 8^th grade National eCYBERMISSION Award in June, 2010 for their science research, team Landroids of Livingston Robotics Club, from Livingston NJ, has won the 1^st place in the international Google X PRIZE Moonbots Challenge for their robot design this summer. Landroids was selected by a panel of expert judges as the grand winner among more than 200 teams of students ages 9 – 18 from 16 countries around the world. The students were designing and using LEGO bricks and MINDSTORM to create simulated lunar rover. The competition was done in two phases. The first phase was completed with the announcement of 20 finalists in June 2010. The second phase competition was concluded in August which required each team to create a website, produce a team documentary video and conduct a live webcast through Skype of their robot mission. Yesterday’s announcement of the winners included the second and third place winners from California and New Jersey/Connecticut. Landroids will be invited to Denmark to visit the LEGO headquarter and executives as part of the grand winning prize.

See the special Lunar Landroids website created for the Moonbots competition and the Moonbots team page for the submittal videos.

More information can be found from the following articles:

• Kids prove they’re MoonBot masters, Cosmic Log on msnbc.com
• Results of the MoonBots Challenge Announced — Houston, We Have a Winner!, WIRED Magazine
• And the Winners of the MoonBots Challenge Are….., X PRIZE Foundation
• X PRIZE Foundation and LEGO Group Announce Winners in “MoonBots” Educational Contest, Moonbots.org [Press Release]

Congratulations to team Landroids!