Competitors in the Lego
Competitors in the Build for Good Lego competition

Legos. Robots. Software.

An HTC employee shows off the "Selfie Bot"
An HTC employee shows off the “Selfie Bot”

Yes, EMP was turned into a geek paradise Thursday night as seven teams from top technology companies in the state faced off in the “Build for Good Robot Competition,” a unique competition sponsored by Lego Mindstorms.

Teams — including developers from Amazon, Expedia, HTC, Microsoft and Zulily — competed for glory and prestige with Lego-powered robots that completed a variety of tasks.

HTC created the “Selfie Bot” — a unique robot designed to take a “selfie photo” and then Tweet it out — while Team Microsoft recreated a robot version of the hit Xbox game Zoo Tycoon. My 4-year-old son’s favorite invention came from team Expedia, which recreated an airport luggage sorter which could smartly choose Lego pieces based on the color.

In the end, the team from Nordstrom took top honors — of course a trophy made of Legos — with a robot that could simulate a fun way to dispense medicine to kids all while dancing to a song from the 80s musical group DeBarge.

“It was really about, how can we solve a real problem?” said Nordstrom team member Jeremy Whitbred, noting that they were inspired by 12-year-old Shubham Banerjee who invented a Braille printer using a Lego Mindstorms set.

Team Nordstrom with their pill-dispensing Lego robot
Team Nordstrom with their Lego trophy, left, and pill-dispensing Lego robot

Team Nordstrom — which also included Joshua Piccari, Brian Duimstra; Brandon Paez; and Jeff Nelson — spent a total of about 100 hours building their Lego robot.

Sortie: The luggage sorter robot from Expedia
Sortie: The luggage sorter robot from Expedia

Inspired by luggage snafus at airports, the Expedia team spent about 20 hours building “Sortie,” a robot that could pick up miniature pieces of luggage, and place them by color in certain bins.

“Any time to work with Legos and robots on work time is a win, right?,” said Daniel Fortine, a senior interaction designer at Expedia.

Suresh Rasaretman, an architect at HTC, said he learned a lot working with his team members.

“The Lego programming language is very visual, and it was easy for us to learn,” said Rasaretman, whose team spent about 70 total hours on the “Selfie” robot. “It teaches us that: ‘Boy, we should make some type of app or programming language for kids to learn Android, or even iPhone.’ It was really nice,”

Team Zulily had perhaps the most practical robot, at least for those parents out there. It developed a robot that helped parents’ avoid stepping on misplaced Legos.

Amazon’s team of engineers, meanwhile, looked to solve world hunger by using a robot to intelligently plant a garden.

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