Winner of the LEGO MINDSTORMS Voice Challenge announced

The winners of the LEGO Group and Amazon’s competition to code with LEGO MINDSTORMS and Alexa have been announced.

Last year, the LEGO Group and Amazon announced a special contest requiring entrants to come up with an outside-the-box voice powered experience that would combine Amazon Alexa and the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3.

Now, the winners have been revealed. The best entries tested the possibilities of what is possible by combining LEGO MINDSTORMS and the Alexa Gadgets Toolkit to create “voice-powered experiences”.

A panel from the LEGO Group and Amazon judged the submissions on criteria including voice integration, LEGO innovation and the development. In total, the winners are taking home $100,00 in gift cards.

The Grand Prize has gone to Jason Alleman, a LEGO fan who has had more than one Ideas set make it all the way to shop shelves. He won with ‘Game Station: Challenge yourself and your friends with interactive games powered by Alexa’.

Here are the rest of the finalists:

• Sky Finder: Explore space with this LEGO MINDSTORMS gadget and ask Alexa to show you the locations of planets, stars and even galaxies
• Amazing Amazon Alexa’s Magic Show (feat. LEGO MINDSTORMS): Amazing Amazon Alexa teams up with the Legendary LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 to perform an amazing magic show
• Paige Turner: An Alexa voice-controlled, LEGO MINDSTORMS robot that can read and turn pages of books for the visually impaired
• LEGO MINDSTORMS Wafflebot with Amazon Alexa: You talk to a robot about waffles, then the robot MAKES YOU WAFFLES
• LEGO MINDSTORMS Puppy Training using Alexa Voice Control: Get the ultimate puppy owner experience: build a LEGO MINDSTORMS puppy and teach the puppy the basic commands using Alexa
• Smart Susan: Everybody loves a tea party but many can’t afford a butler so this entry into the 13 – 17 Year Old Creators category transformed the Lazy Susan into a Smart Susan

“We believe anything is possible when it comes to building with LEGO products and we challenge ourselves to inspire our creators in new ways every day. For the last 20 years LEGO MINDSTORMS has delivered powerful technology in an accessible way that helps people bring their builds and imaginations to life,” says Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President of the LEGO Creative Play Lab.

“We were excited to see how our community would take their LEGO MINDSTORMS creations one step further by integrating Amazon’s voice-powered technology and we certainly weren’t disappointed. The submissions showcase the amazing creativity of our LEGO MINDSTORM builders and demonstrate the sheer breadth of new experiences that can be built with our iconic products.”

The Grand Prize winner’s creation will be on display at the annual LEGO World event in Copenhagen, so attendees can try out the Game Station.