LEGO Rovers
An Activity for Children in Key Stages 2 and 3

LEGO Rovers

Lego Rovers is a public engagement activity for children in Key Stages 2 and 3 which teaches them the challenges of remote control of planetary rovers. Children get to navigate their own space rover, see the effect of the time delay between the Earth, the Moon and Mars, and experiment with automation rules based on concepts from artificial intelligence programming.

It is taken to schools in the Greater Manchester and Merseyside area via the STEM Ambassador Scheme, and has appeared at Cheltenham Science Festival and events at regional museums. It was used as a basis for a challenge in the NASA 2013 Space Apps Hackathon.

Lego Rovers was developed by Dr. Louise Dennis leader of the Autonomy and Verification Group at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. It has been funded by the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).