In three weeks' time, build a robot that takes photos and follows Twittered commands and win a free trip to Vegas and $5,000. Piece of cake, right?

Of course it wasn't, but Edina's Eric Liu managed to pull off the feat -- and come up just short of the $10,000 top prize -- at this week's Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) Wireless confab.

Liu designed his 'bot, called Niko, with a Lego Mindstorm torso and a Nokia N900 smartphone "head." After his design became one of three finalists, the hard part -- build it in 21 days -- started.

"At the beginning it felt like trying to get on a 90-degree mountain," said Liu, 30, by phone from Las Vegas. "I had never used the Lego kit or the N900. So it was like, where do I start?

"But then after doing some research at Nokia, you start finding a community. There's also a Lego community, and a lot of articles about how you 'Mindstorm' your robot."

But the brains of this outfit (aside from Liu) is the Nokia mobile computer. Commands come in via a 3G network or WiFi, and Niko then "determines what it needs to do," Liu said, such as maneuvering hither and yon or taking and posting photos.

Liu named his robot after the Greek word "nikolas," or "victory for the people." He'll share Niko's design with the people, at blogs.nokia.com/pushn900.

Finishing second to a bicycle dashboard apparatus was the only disappointment. "You always want to win," Liu said. "But it was a lot of fun for everyone. We all got to come to CTIA, share our passions and see our designs come to life."

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643