I competed in a variety of robotics competitions between 2001 and 2023, eventuall winning a total of 52 medals, 22 of them Gold.

My first robot competition was the Robotics Society of America Games at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 2001. When the competition evolved into the RobOlympics in 2004 I won my first gold medal with Ziggy in the Walker Challenge, an offroad race for walking robots. Ziggy subsequently won 8 gold medals in a row, making him the only robot in the competition to win 8 consecutive gold medals. Ziggy lost the medal in 2012 to the Indonesian robot DU116SGR-V12 but with my new robot Glider I retook the Gold in 2013. Here I am receiving both the Gold Medal and Bronze Medal for the Walker Challenge in 2013 with my sons Aiden and Orion.

I was particulary proud of the Lego TubePush win with Tubulator, which, although in a less high profile competition, provided a particularly difficult challenge, both in hardware and sofware. The Lego NXT platform only had 3 motor ports but my design required 4 motions, a limitation I overcame with a Lego clutch mechanism. The maze was incrementally more difficult to navigate but I was able to build a robot using Lego IR sensors that navigated a complicated maze, picked up all tubes and stowed them on the robot before reaching the finish. See the video of Tubulator winning Gold here.

The competion was renamed RoboGames in 2005 and in the following years I built and competed a variety of robots, winning 52 medals in total, including 22 gold medals and Best of Show Gold for Marauder in 2023. I was the only builder to win at least one gold medal in each of the 10 years that the competition originally ran for (2004-2013).

I have won medals in Best of Show, Walker Challenge, Android Soccer, Ribbon Climber, Kinetic Art Bot, Lego Best of Show, Lego Tubepush and Lego Challenge.

 

In 2011 Discovery Channel filmed a one hor TV special at RoboGames and the program was hosted by my old friend Grant Imahara (RIP).

I had known Grant since BattleBots days when he was just another robot builder but now that he had gained fame from his work with Mythbusters it was fun to get to work with him on TV and showcase Ziggy winning a gold medal on the international stage. We were all very sad to lose Grant in 2020.

The show was called "Killer Robots: RoboGames 2011" and focused on the robotic combat competition but it also featured a few of the other competions including the "Walker Challenge", in which Ziggy was undefeated at the time, having won the Gold for 7 years in a row. In the competition Ziggy won the Gold Medal for the 8th time in a row!

Watch the clip here.

I also officiated a number of competitions at RoboGames including the Line Follower competition which proved to be one of the most hotly contested races in the show.

Click on the thumbnails below for clips of a variety of my competitions: