Techno Games

Techno Games is the Olympic Games for robots. The TV series is shown on BBC2 every weekday for a fortnight from the third Monday in March just after Science Week. The series of ten programmes starts at 6.45pm and each programme lasts for 45 minutes. Schools, Collages, individuals and technology clubs compete to break world records and win medals. For most events life-like movement is required so for example in the swimming event propellers are banned in favour of legs, paddles, flippers and fins.

Noel Sharkey, Skeletron and Martin Smith.

Skeletron is the gas powered natural rope climber that so impressed the NESTA award judging panel that his builders Matt and Ray Tait won an all expenses paid trip to NASA in Florida. Martin produced the text and animation drawings that show how Skeletron works http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/robots/techlab/index.shtml

Meet Phoebius the winner of the Solar Challenge

To visit the Techno Games website Click Here

EVENTS

Assault Course
Cycling
Gymnastics
High Jump
Long Jump
Micromouse (Wall following)
Micromouse (Maze solving)
Relay Cars
Rocket Cars and Funny Cars
Solar Challenge Cars
Cycling
Football
Tug-of-War
Rope Climbing (Natural movement-arms and legs)
Rope Climbing (Artificial movement-wheels and rollers)
Sprint (Two, three, four, six and eight legged walkers)
Sumo
Swimming
Water Polo
Outdoor Events (Penalty kick, Shot Put)

In addition there are exhibition events such as biped walking to guage interest for future competitions. The events which are filmed in December are designed to be fun and informal. Each year there is a spectacular prize awarded. In the past these have included a trip for the winning team to see robots in Japan and a trip to see the space rockets at NASA in Florida.

The line up for the Techno Games two legged walker exhibition event. The humans are David Buckley on the right and John Shepherd on the left. John built the human sized red and silver, steel robot. David Buckley built all the robots on the table except the one on the far right. This is Scarlet which was built by Roger Starnes.

Scarlet resting on its stand. Scarlet has 15 PIC microcontrollers and 30 servo-motors. Roger Starnes, Scarlet’s creator, was inspired by the book “An Introduction to Robotics “ by Harpit Sandhu which contains plans for an 8 servo walking biped. Early versions of Scarlet used servo drive boards from Milford Instruments.