Martin Smith
Contents |
Shows
The Great Egg Race (contestant)
Robot Wars (contestant then judge)
Techno Games (technical expert)
Scrapheap Challenge (technical expert)
Mutant Machines (co-host and technical expert)
Mechannibals (contestant)
Biography
London-born Professor of Robotics. He built "Dreggster", an eggmobile, for The Great Egg Race. 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. Later he built "Cruella" to compete on Robot Wars. For the third and the 97 subsequent episodes he was a judge. When Techno Games was launched he was the Technical Expert on all 35 programmes over 4 series with Ulrika Jonsson, Jayne Middlemiss and Philippa Forrester. He and one of his students built a robot night watchman which featured on Carol Vorderman's 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" and "The Basement" with Ed Hall.
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" and "Tomorrow's World" with Philippa Forrester and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. He was the Technical Expert on one episode of Scrapheap Challenge with Robert Llewellyn. Martin was awarded the contract to build three presentation robots called "Cycler" for the environmental charity Waste Watch. His student did all the design and building work though. He has also been interviewed as a technical expert on several occasions for 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 and a YouTube channel.
