My LEGO History



Steve's LEGO History



Here is a record of my LEGO history. This is not just so I can pat myself on the back, but so I can keep track of events I've entered.



In 2006 things with LEGO got crazy, and I stopped keeping track. Before that, I did this...
November 12th 2005 - Chibots Fall Robot Games In addition to competing in all the events, Brian, Bryan and I took a GBC to display. My Basic Line Following robots finished first and second. My Advanced Line Following robot finished third, with a time of 135 seconds (including 90 seconds in penalties) just 25 seconds behind first place. 10 robots, 5 Modules
August 12-14 2005 - Brickfest DC GBC & Mindstorms/Technic challenges The GBC. There's really not much more to say. It was a huge success. In addition, I had a robot for the Tag Team Sumo event, which won (mostly by itself) and finished second in the Super Mega sumo event. 8 robots, 10 GBC modules
May 05 - Lafayette LafLRC Indy 5.0 Again, we run the Indy 5.0 Race. It went well, and was very close. 1 robot First
May '05 - Indianapolis, In LEGO Celebration III ISD speed-build. Eight team, head-to-head tournament. We won all three rounds, which took place in less than 24 hours. 0 robot(s)
April 13 2005 - Billund, Denmark LEGO AFOL Mindstorms tournament We won the best robot design, and finished a very dissapointing second, to a very good team. 1 robot
March 25-27 - San Francisco, Ca Robogames 2005 Stick wins best of show against all other robots. 8 robots five medals
January - March GBC xx robots
Febuary, 2005 - Science Central NEIRG Winter games A-Mazing wins the maze event (again), BFB wins in line following, Reactor III Wins LEGO Sumo 4 Robots
Sept through Dec 2004 - FLL First Lego League - No Limits This doesn't really count as something I've entered, but I've coached an FLL team for the last four years. This year, our team had another strong showing, again winning the Teamwork award, which is something that I hope will stick with the team much longer than a single robot design, or one good presentation. We also took second in Team Spirit. It appears this year, the award was based more on how your team conducts itself, and less on how loud they yell. The team finished third in Robot Preformance, third in the research presentation, and third overall. I think they have a lot to be proud of.
November 13, 2004 - Chibots Fall challenge Ben Hur again won the basic line following with a speed of 82 cm/sec. BFB won both the Advanced line following, and the line maze. And Speed of Sound finished 3rd in the mini-sumo. 4 robot totalling 6 event entries
September 18, 2004 - LRGoAA Sumobot 6 Out of 17 robots in the Open class, my robots finished 1st, 2nd, & 4th. The first place robot was an all-mechanical robot called Reactor III, which had a motor-driven 5 second delay. 3 robot(s) of my own 1 robot for Heather 1 robot for Matt
August 13-15 2004 - Brickfest DC Mindstorms/Technic challenges Turns out, the ocean crossing event was pretty tough. But, my robot managed to make it across, and get second place. Knife IV won both the sumo chaser, and the sumo events. And Slope won the King of the hill. My Connect Four robots were also voted the best MOC in the Technic/Mindstorms room 5 robots totaling 10 event entries, 13 Spybots, and 2 Connect Four robots
August 7, 2004 - Science Central NEIRG Summer games A-Mazing wins the maze event (again), BFB finishes second in line following (again), QuickSpy finishes third in the Open class sumo, and is promptly destroyed (loser), and Top Stock wins the stock class sumo. Top Stock was an interesting design, because there were no sensors. It used a mechanical lock attached to the front bumper to stop the drive wheel on one side or the other, depending on which side was being pressed. 4 Robots
July 22nd 2004 - TechTV Really On Tech TV The show aired. It was cool.
June 4th 2004 - TechTV I made my second trip to be on TechTV's The Screen Savers . This time I took my Connect Four robot Full Contact, and another robot I think I'm going to call "Stick". I think the show will air July 22. Here are the details.
May 1 & 2 2004 - LafLRC Blocks & Bots My Open class sumo "Quick Spy" won the event by intimidating it's opponents. My stock class sumo tied for 3rd, and my last-minute Indy 5.00 car finished third. 4 Robots
March 20 + 21st 2004 - Robolympics Full Contact-1st, Ben Hur-1st, AMazing-1st, Straight-Up(ribbon Climber)-2nd, In&Out(Mindstorms challenge)-3rd, Legway-3rd (open), Speed Of Sound (mini-sumo) 7 robots, 6 events, 6 medals
March 2004 Through now, 47 + 65 = 112 robots entered in competition in 3 years.
Feb 28 2004 - Science Central NEIRG Winter 2004 Maze (2x)=Amazing(1st x2), Line Following=BFB(2nd), Open Sumo=Road Hog(2nd) (4 robots, 2 wins, 2 second place)
Feb 15th 2004 - LafLRC I don't even remember what we did. 1 robot
Jan 31 2004 - Toronto rtl 15 - Deep Yellow - C$ - Connect Four Like all rtl events, the goal of this event was to build a robot that does something. In this case, the goal was to build a robot to play the game Connect-Four. As it turns out, several people developed software to control their robots, with very good strategy, but they left out one small step. They forgot to build a robot. In the end, there were about 14 or 15 robots that showed up, but only two (mine, and one other) that could actually play the game. A couple came pretty close, but had mechanical problems of one sort or another. When I remembered to plug the AC into my robot, it didn't have any problems, and it won the competition. Derek had a very nice robot which spent a great deal of time thinking about moves, and NEVER had any mechanical problems. The third place robot (tie for third) was also from Lafayette and was designed & built by John Broust. It didn't attempt to scan the board or use any logic. It just randomly dropped chips into the board. And it also never had any mechanical failures. My second robot also didn't scan the board, and randomly dropped chips. It would have tied for third, but I really didn't worry about playing very many games with it. 2 robots
November 9, 2003 - Chibots 1st Advanced LF, 2nd Mini-Sumo, demo Ben Hur 7 robots
Sept 20 2003 - LRGoAA Sumo-bot Five Heather's robot Dizzy, won this event, followed by Chip, Knife, and Combine. 8 Robots
August 2003 - Brickfest DC Mindstorms/Technic challenges John Barnes ran a couple great events. While building a maze robot is rather difficult, this maze challenge turned out easier than most people expected. I had four maze robots, including an all-mechanical maze robot named "Wally". The sumo event was very interesting, because it included the "twist" which required robots to fit into an eight inch CIRCLE. This was where Heather and I first designed "Dizzy", which used a pair of Hailfire droid wheels rotating around the outside to deflect opponents. rtlToronto's Pipe Racer was a rather difficult challenge, but my robot "Free Fall" was up to the task. Free-Fall was able to pass 10 of the 12 turns every time, before engaging the opponent. The guys from rtl continue to wine about this robot as being a "loophole" design, because when I showed up, I asked if the batteries had to be carried along with the robot, which was not explicitly specified in the rules. When they said that was not allowed, I attached the batteries to the robot, and totally kicked their asses anyway. 7 robots
August 2003 - Science Central NEIRG Summer games There were six events: LEGO Stock Sumo, LEGO Open sumo, LEGO Maze, Open Maze, LEGO Hockey, Open Hockey. I was lucky enough to win the sumo events with a couple one-event robots. AMazing won the LEGO Maze, and was fast enough to win the Open maze, if it weren't for Chip, which was modified to run a maze. The hockey event never really caught on, so I won by default. This event stands out as my best single day of competition, winning 6 events with 5 robots. Also, including Brickfest 2003, which took place one week later, I entered 9 events, and finished with 9 wins, 2 seconds & 2 thirds over a two weekend stretch. 6 robots
June 15 2003 - LafLRC Cube Hunt Kerby designed a very cool challenge where the object was to collect cubes and move them to the matching color on the outside of the playingfield. My robot was quite fast and took first place. 1 robot
June 7 2003 - LRGoAA Maze Solving 2 Amazing R&L, AMZ, Mazmorzing and Chip; Amazing took 1st place with a time of 15 seconds. The fastest robot from someone else was around 32 seconds 5 robots
April 13 2003 - Chibots 1st Basic LF (Ben Hur II), 2nd Advanced LF; Ben Hur II, which received about 30 seconds in penalties, and lost by 10 seconds, 1st mini-sumo (Sound 6x) 5 robots
April 12, 2003 - Workshop 3D #6 Ben Hur, 1st. Knife=top 5. 2 robots
April 5 2003 - LRGoAA - King of the Hill - One robot, HT24-Crawler worked well. It was the overall winner, and the People's Choice.
March 17 2003 - Running Robot Count - - As of today, I've entered 65 robots into contests in just over two years
March 15 2003 - rtlToronto - rtl13 Last Bot Standing - King of the hill. Two robots, one win. Free Yoda.
Feburary 22 2003 - Science Central - Sumo, Maze, Hockey - Two sumo robots. One maze robot. One hockey robot.
Janurary 23 2003 - LRGoAA - Sumo Four - There were sixteen robots present, five were mine. Knife, Fingers, Combine, Pocket Bot, and Reactor. Knife was one of the lighter robots, but used an ultrasonic sensor for opponent detection. Knife took first, because it was able to defeat opponents even with its edge sensors disabled. Fingers (Heather's design) tied for third, thanks to its pushing power. Combine (fifth) performed well. Pocket Bot (sixth) was a very small, light robot that I built in about an hour. Reactor (eleventh) did not use an RCX.
Janurary 17 2003 - Tech TV - Legway hits TV - I was invited to appear on Tech TV's Screen Savers, to show Legway. They sent me to San Francisco and I presented Legway Version 2.0 (along with a couple other Legways), which was based on LEGO's Acrobot and was able to stand itself from a lying position.
Janurary 5 & 19 2003 - Lafayette Lego Robotics Club - Sumo - After First Lego League ended, our club had two "small" sumo events. Both had sixteen entries, and I had five robots for each. It wasn't an "official" event, so there weren't any awards.
December 8 2002 - Chibots - Line Following - Ben Hur makes an exibition run. It was the fastest by two seconds, and ten seconds ahead of the third robot.
December 7 2002 - LRGoAA - Line Following - In this line following triathlon, robots had to compete in three events, which included the Closed Loop, where they had to see how far they could go in 2 minutes, Accurate Stop, where they tried to stop close to a line, and Continueous Line, where they had to see how far they could go on a line with turns & breaks. Ben Hur took first overall, and won two of the three events, and Stretch (a robot I built the night before the event), won the third event, and finished second overall.
November 9 2002 - rtlToronto - rtl12 Block Stacking Revisited - I worked with Rob S. (a member of rtlToronto) to build the "International Block Station". Both parts were working fine, but we had problems getting them to communicate with each other, and we weren't able to get it working together like we wanted. We stacked some blocks, and won a round, but that was about it.
October 17 2002 - LegWay hits SlashDot - On Oct 14, I put up a web page for LegWay, my two wheeled balancing robot, and I announced it on Lugnet. For a couple days, I received about 100 page views a day. Thursday night, it was posted on SlashDot. Over the next 24 hours, it received over 20,000 page views, and another 20,000 over the next week. It would have been higher, but Geocities kept limiting my bandwidth.
October 12 2002 - Workshop3D Challenge 5 - Line Following & Sumo - I took the same 2lb sumo from previous events with a new paint job (color scheme), named it "The Combine" and sent it to Seattle. It fought a tough battle, losing once in a judges decision, where it was less than 5 seconds from pushing its opponent off the edge when time expired, after a 3 minute pushing match. But the judges selected the other robot as the winner, because it had got underneath The Combine.(?) But after finishing off the one robot left in losers bracket, it again met the only robot to defeat it. After a quick Combine win (thanks to program #2), and another 3 minute draw (bad program #3), the judges requested a fourth re-match to decide the event, which Combine easily won (program #2 again) to bring home another RIS. My line following robots suffered from reliablity issues, but still pulled off 2 second places.
August 24 2002 - Lafayette Lego Robotics Club - Sumo - While there were eighteen entries total, and eight in the adult class, after a couple robots failed to show, I ended up with five robots in the adult class, and they took first through fourth, and seventh. Heather's robot again took the top spot.
August 10 2002 - Science Central - Sumo - A self-imposed 2 lb weight limit made PR36 not eligable for this event. For the first time, I let Heather keep the winning robot while I did some experiementing. Heather's first place prize was a Force-Feedback mouse.
July 21 2002 - Brickfest 2002 - Sumo - PR36 dominates the event, taking only 52 seconds to beat seven opponents and win an RIS.
July 19 2002 - Brickfest 2002 - Scree Runner - Climb a pile of LEGOs. I built an arm for PR36, so it could reach out and touch the finish line. A second entry actually climbed the hill in the fastest time. I should have received first AND second, but I'll live with just first place and a 4x4 Off Road buggy ($125 value)
July 13 2002 - LRGoAA - Sumo Bot III - This was the first apperance for PR36 (Perfect Robot #36). PR36 was good. It was in seven battles. Five of them lasted a combined 10 seconds.
May 18 2002 - LRGoAA - Item Gathering - I hooked up with a group a few hours from here. For this event, both Heather and I had robots. The goal was to collect blocks and return them to your home square. My robot ("Milk Money") was designed to travel to the opponents square, collect all blocks, and return them to MY square. If its opponent was in the way, it was moved. (Milk Money had eight motors and weighed about 7 lbs) The other robot ("MINE") was named by Matt, and was designed to collect blocks one at a time and store them until it returned to base. Milk Money was very successful, and was able to power to victory.
April 13 2002 - Workshop3d Challenge 4 - This time, I shipped two robots, a lightweight sumo, and a convertable line follower that could be entered in two events. I won the Single RIS and Unlimited line following events, and took third in both the code-only line following, and the sumo events.
Feb 23 2002 - Science Central - Sumo - I took two robots to the event. 'Totally Excessive' was able to take first place, while 'Flip' (a robot with a lifting arm) was never able to lift any robots.
Feb 10 2002 - Chibots - Line following - My robot 'Lego Lightning' completed three laps in 22.13 seconds and won the event. Second place was 48 sec. 'Lego Lightning' also won best of show for a unique, three-wheel design.
October 6 2001 - Workshop3d Challenge 3 - I built a robot, 'Toto' (Try, Try Again) that was entered in ALL events. It won the code-only line following, but didn't do well in the other events. It was fun trying to build a robot that could enter all the events
April 21 2001 - Brick Battles II - King of the Ring & Line Following - 'Ram Rod II' won both events, and the overall. Heather's "Rosebud" took third (of four) in the line following, and second in the King of the Ring for second overall. Brick Battles III was never held.
April 8 2001 - CIRC - LEGO Sumo - Brutus wins against 3 other bots. Heather's "Red Lightning" takes third. This is where my sumo robots started to get big.
Feb 10 2001 - Brick Battles - King of the Ring (sumo) - My robot 'Ram Rod' easily won, while Heather's 'Resistance Is Futile' took second out of five bots
Age 13 - Entered a 'build on the spot' contest. Built a car chassis with trailer & boat. Won gift certificate for first place.
Age 12 - Entered building contest in Lafayette with a 'Competition Tractor'. Won 2 blue ribbons, and a red ribbon
date - group event robot(s)