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Toys and Tabletop Games

This all-terrain, driverless Lego construction vehicle could be our future

Lego masters from around the world are imagining tomorrow's building equipment, brick by brick.

Vida András used about 3,100 Lego bricks for his Volvo Rottweiler.

Volvo Construction Equipment

The Volvo Rottweiler is an autonomous construction vehicle that can work in rough terrain. It's equipped with a 3D printer that creates the materials it uses to construct buildings. And it's made of Lego bricks.

Vida András, a 27-year-old Romanian architect, designed the Rottweiler for a contest created by Lego Technic and Volvo Construction Equipment. The contest ran last fall on Lego Ideas, a site where fans enter competitions and submit their own designs in the hopes they'll be popular enough to be made commercially. Entrants were invited to imagine the construction machines of the future by identifying tomorrow's problems and creating a machine that will tackle them. 


The imposing Rottweiler measures 32x24x32 inches (80x60x80 centimeters) and took 3,100 Lego bricks to build. With its four legs and detachable head, it looks more like it escaped from a sci-fi movie than a building site. That's no accident. The judges were looking for futuristic designs, and András wanted to create something that evoked power and functionality.

"The strength of it and the usefulness of it appeals to me the most," he said.

The Rottweiler and nine other contest entries are on display this week at the London Transport Museum.


Solving tomorrow's problems

While other industries have embraced 3D printing, András says it hasn't been used to its full potential yet in construction. 3D printing could be used to experiment with new structure ideas and allow architects to design buildings using shapes that are "almost impossible to form by hand."

The 3D printer is also key to the Rottweiler's environment-conscious approach. "3D printing is a way of reducing the manufacturing waste," says András. He describes 3D printing as almost wasteless from source material to final product, adding that it could help reduce pollution from factories.

Volvo Icarus model

The Volvo Icarus is a mobile solar power plant.

Volvo Construction Equipment

Runner-up James Cox of London created the Volvo Icarus, a mobile solar plant with off-road capabilities. It's 39x24x16 inches (100x60x40 centimeters) and used about 4,000 Lego bricks. Cox says the name started out as a sort of joke -- "cause obviously I didn't fly too close to the sun" -- but it suited his concept and sounded cool. So he kept it.


"Because the concept was to make a machine for the future, I thought if things aren't environmentally friendly -- if they're not clean, if they're not environmentally safe -- they're not going to work because fossil fuels will run out. Environmental standards are going to become stricter. We need a way around it, and it needs to be something that can work anywhere."

Cox conceived the Icarus as a solar power generator. He then decided to make it mobile, adding the off-road chassis after he'd built the mechanics for the solar array.

Now playing: Watch this: Lego's weirdest new robots are heading to schools


András created the Rottweiler using a digital building tool. The design didn't become a physical reality until he won the competition and Lego sent him the pieces required to create it. Meanwhile Cox worked freehand, building the Icarus with physical blocks. When he submitted his entry, he included a video of the mobile power plant in action.

"A lot of entries are digital and they don't actually exist and they don't actually work," Cox says. "So I made sure that it had a video so you could see every single part that was listed. You could see it working."

Volvo Rottweiler

The Volvo Rottweiler is a four-legged answer to tomorrow's construction challenges.

Volvo Construction Equipment

Impressing the judges


But there's no such thing as a "typical" Lego builder. Some entrants are professional design engineers or graphic designers, but that's not always the case. One of the runner-up models is a carrier drone created by a 13-year-old.

This wasn't the first rodeo for either András or Cox. Both designers have won and placed in previous Lego competitions and both have an idea of how to catch a judge's eye.

András says he took on a big challenge with the Rottweiler. Instead of building a digger or a bulldozer, he used the Rottweiler's detachable heads to make it a multipurpose machine. The ambitious approach paid off.

"The secret to wow a Lego judge is try not to wow a Lego judge," András said. "The best thing you can do is … just construct what wows you. And if you have 100% confidence in your construction, I think it will reach its purpose and I think it will wow everybody if it wows you."



"It's gotta look good. It's gotta look impressive. And it's gotta… just look big," he says. Yes, you can do something clever with a small design, but if it doesn't look great, it just won't have the same impact.

András was also proud of his creation's appearance, describing the Rottweiler's animalistic look as one of his favorite features.

Judges from Lego and Volvo evaluated the entries based on how well the models were built, how futuristic their functionalities were and how exciting they looked. Arvid Rinaldo, who works in brand communication and partnerships at Volvo Construction Equipment, highlighted the winning designs' unique features and use of futuristic technology.

"It's almost like they come out of a science-fiction movie," he said. "It's really inspiring for our engineers to see ... what people from all over the world can do."


Originally published May 14. 
Update, May 16: Adds video of the Lego vehicles.