This past weekend I had the pleasure of serving as a judge at a FIRST Lego League robotics competition. It was a blast!

FIRST is an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It’s an organization founded by Dean Kamen, world-class scientist and inventor. He’s the genius behind the Segway scooter and hundreds of other inventions that make the world better. Cool stuff.

Basically, the mission of FIRST is to make science exciting for school kids, and to boost the level of excellence in technology education around the world. The FIRST Lego League includes kids from elementary school through middle school. Each team builds a robot using the Lego Mindstorms kit. The robot has to be programmed to autonomously complete several missions. How it does that is up to the kids.

The projects are judged on whether they complete the tasks, but also on presentation (there is research associated with each project), design, and teamwork. There are awards for each category.

Without getting gushy, I saw some amazing robots. Better, I saw lots of kids who were enthusiastic about science and learning. They were smart and eager to tell us everything — including their mistakes. Unlike older kids, who shy away from admitting when things go wrong, the younger kids reveled in explaining what they did wrong and how they learned from it. It was an amazing experience.

Here are some iPhone pix from the event; click on the thumbnail for a larger version: