BREAKING NEWS: HungaroBots made it, they have been selected for Phase II! Congratulations!

Registration for the 2012 MoonBots competition is now closed: 147 teams entered from 22 countries, and three Hungarian teams are among them! Two of the teams is affiliated with Puli Space: HungaroBots, from Sopron, is mentored by us, and Hungarian Mooncraft Makers from Kecskemét has connections to us too. The third team is Martians – the new generation from Szentendre.

From left to right: Áron Németh, Botond Sléber, Márton Deák (team leader, Puli Space), Bálint Soós, László Bodnár and Norbert Wesely.

HungaroBots is a group of five high school students, led by Puli Space member Márton Deák, who first met the students at a workshop on Mars in Budapest. They were presenting their LEGO-built, programmable Rosetta lander model. Márton started to chat with them and recommended the MoonBots challenge to them. Soon the team was formed and they started to work on the first challenges: two short essays and a 4-minute video. You can read the essays on the homepage and watch the video below – we think its awesome:

The next step will be the selection of the 30 finalist teams, the decision will happen very soon. If the HungaroBots will make the cut, they will have to build the proposed lunar landscape and they will also receive a programmable LEGO Mindstorms kit to build their robot. The former will take place either at the Csodák Palotája (Palace of Wonders) in Budapest or the FUTURA Interactive Science Center in Mosonmagyaróvár (which opens on 17^th August). And for the latter, looking at the Rosetta lander model, it will be a piece of cake for the boys!

László Molnár