Martin Smith

Biography

London-born Professor of Robotics. In 1979 he built "Dreggster", an eggmobile, for BBC TV's The Great Egg Race. In 1990 in order to enter the Robot Olympics in Glasgow, he hurriedly built a fast moving robot arm with a gripper to enter the Javelin Contest. In 1998 he built "Cruella" to compete on BBC 2's Robot Wars. It nearly beat "Robot the Bruce" in series 1 episode 3 but did not do so well in series 2 episode 9. For the third and the 97 subsequent episodes he was a judge. He and one of his students built a robot night watchman which featured on Carol Vorderman's 1997 programme "Put it to the Test". She called the robot Robocop and the name stuck. Robocop was also featured on Suzi Perry's programme "What's the Big Idea", "It'll Never Work" 1997 and "The Basement" with Ed Hall 1998. In 1997 and '98 he was the International Touring Lecturer for the Institution of Electrical Engineers. When the BBC's TV series Techno Games was launched in 2000 he was the Technical Expert on all 35 programmes over 4 series with Ulrika Jonsson, Jayne Middlemiss and Philippa Forrester.

He has been instrumental in increasing the popularity in the UK of the International Micromouse Contest. Micromice are small microprocessor controlled robots that can search a relatively large maze and find their way back to the start position in the shortest possible time. He demonstrated the contest on BBC2's "Robocritters" (2000) and "Tomorrow's World Live" with Philippa Forrester and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2000. He was the Technical Expert on one episode of Scrapheap Challenge with Robert Llewellyn (2001). Martin was awarded the contract to build three presentation robots called "Cycler" for the environmental charity Waste Watch. His MSc by Research student did all the design and building work. Cycler was featured on Techno Games in 2003. In 2004 he was the Technical Presenter and Judge on the TV series Mutant Machines with Louise Brady. In 2005 he was a contestant on Mechannibals. He has been interviewed as a technical expert on robotics and artificial intelligence on several occasions for BBC News and Sky News.

Trivia

As a student he worked as a hospital porter and a supermarket shelf filler. Some years later he served as an Expert Witness in a small number of Old Bailey trials.

Web links

He has accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and a YouTube channel.

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