User:MartinSmith

Martin Smith Built an "Eggmobile" for the 1979 BBC gameshow "The Great Egg Race". His machine got through the heats and he was interviewed on the radio then invited to compete in the televised competitions. A few years later in order to take part in the Robot Olympics in Glasgow he built a fast moving robot arm and gripper to create a robot javelin thrower. It won second prize and a silver medal. He was interviewed for several radio and TV stations. He joined the University of East London as a lecturer and took on the role of projects tutor making up project ideas for BSc, MSc and PhD students. Some of his students decided to enter the IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers) Micromouse Contest. The contest is popular in many countries including the USA and Japan. The contest is to create a microprocessor controlled mobile robot that can search a maze consisting of 256 squares and work out the best path in order to return to the start square in the shortest possible time. One of his students developed the fastest university student built mice of the day. It was called Maisie. It and most of his students projects can be seen on his YouTube channel.

Steve Carsey a TV producer had seen an American version of Robot Wars and wanted to generate interest to run the competition in the UK. He asked Martin to help and together they created a robotics stand at the London Model Engineering Show. Martin built a robot for Robot Wars and got some students to help. He called the robot Cruella. He was interviewed on the show by Jeremy Clarkson and Philippa Forrester. When one of the judges left Martin was asked to take his place and he became a judge for 5 more series of 97 shows.

He told Steve Carsey, the Robot Wars producer, how popular the Robot Olympics had been and suggested to Steve that he might consider making a robot Olympics TV series, which he did. It was called Techno Games and ran for 4 years. Martin was the technical expert Co-host for all 35 shows. He was invited to be the technical expert Co-host on Mutant Machines with Louise Brady as host. He joined one of the teams on Mechannibals helping to create a machine that could cook and serve a fish and chips dinner. He was invited to go on Tomorrow's World Live on two occasions and he found himself on the group of experts on robotics and artificial intelligence for Sky News.

He is a motoring enthusiast having built up a 1650cc supercharged Ford Anglia, a Lotus Elite, two Lotus Excels and now has a Nissan GTR. He lives in London. The more academic career side of his life is on LinkedIn.