News coming out of the FIRST Championship in St. Louis this weekend includes the announcement of a new robotics challenge for kids. The contest, called the XPrize After Earth Challenge, asks kids if they have what it takes to preserve humanity — a theme that ties in to the upcoming Will & Jaden Smith movie, After Earth.
To participate, teams of two to five should create a two minute video that addresses sustainable living and exploration of potential sites for humanity’s next settlement. Once videos are uploaded, the Internet votes on the videos and the top twenty are considered for the next round.
A panel of judges will narrow that selection to ten teams, who will each receive a Sony camcorder and a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit to build a robot to complete the mission parameters of round two. The missions and videos will be evaluated in round two and the winning team will have the video of their mission featured on the US Blu-ray release of After Earth.
You must register and upload your video by June 7 to compete in the challenge. “It’s a quick time frame, but we don’t think it will hinder [the team’s] ideas,” says Alan Zack, Senior Director of Marketing at the XPrize Foundation. “Many teams are already familiar with making a quality video from our other program, MoonBots. We look forward to receiving all the submissions from around the world. It is going to be a great Challenge.”
Complete rules and conditions can be found on the XPrize After Earth Challenge Web site.
