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This has to be one of the neatest chess projects we have seen, both in concept and execution. First picture a robot chess set. Now imagine the board is about 3.8 x 3.8 meters (or 12 x 12 feet). Finally imagine each giant robot piece is actually made of LEGO® pieces, and with this you have the Monster Chess set.
View of the white side of the Monster Chess set. Not only do they move around,
making room for other pieces to pass, but many of the pieces are animated, such as
the knights that claw at the air.
This staggering project built by Team Hassenburg, and led by Steve Hassenburg, took four people about a year to create, and is utterly complete in its execution. The robot set is controlled by a tablet PC with software that allows you to do what you would expect of a normal chess program: play against a friend, play against the computer, replay a saved game, etc.
Introductory video explaining how it works.
The set itself is comprised of over 100 thousand LEGO® pieces, including 37 thousand in the chessboard, 17 thousand in the robot bases, 17 thousand in the bodies, 22 thousand in the mosaics, and a little over 1853 in the move selection center. The estimated retail cost of this endeavor was over $30,000, and has been displayed at the noted LEGO®-based event called Brickworld.
Video of a short master game being replayed.
