Ok folks, I know it’s taken a while, but the results are finally in and we now have winners for the GoRobotics 10th anniversary giveaway! I’m super excited about this and very grateful to our prizes sponsors:
Pololu
Solarbotics ,
Vex Robotics,
Apress, and No Starch Press.

Before listing the winners let me say a few words on the judging. Each project had at least two judges (and some had three) who evaluated the robots based on three criteria: Originality/Creativity (25%), Workmanship (25%), and Builder Experience (50%). Finally, each robot got up to a +/- 50% adjustment based on the judges discretion. Basically we tried to judge based on cool robots and account for how much experience the builder had. In the end, I think it worked out pretty well. I’d also like to give a big thanks to all the entrants! It was a lot of fun judging all the neat creations. You folks do some nice work!

To accommodate some winners I changed around the prizes a bit from the original post. So, without more delay, the winners:

3rd Place - HaloBOT by mcb1 – chosen at random

Mark says, “I built HaloBOT for my daughter. It was her design, which was based on an earlier version that used overseas sourced parts. It is based on Picaxe18 and can be programmed in either basic or flowchart, which suits her programming level.”

HaloBOT wins:

Pololu Jrk 21v3 USB Motor Controller (donated by Pololu), Build Your Own CNC Machine (donated by Apress), LEGO Mindstorms NXT One-Kit Wonders (donatedby No Starch Press). ($105 total!)

2nd Place – Mosquito Rover by MarkusB

Markus says, “[The Mosquito Rover] Navigates around via IR, produces oxyhydrogen, shoots off rubber plugs. The idea behind the mosqito rover was to combine robotics and chemistry — in this case electrochemistry — and that the robot makes it’s own explosives by solar power and propels a second small flying object with it.”

He also says, “I will donate the Arduino Kit to a Chinese student who can not afford to buy it under the condition to build a robot and post this robot on LMR.” Awesome!

The Mosquito Rover wins:

Oomlout Arduino Experimenters Kit (donated by Solarbotics), Practical Arduino and LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0: The Kings Treasure (donated byApress), and The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide (donated by No Starch Press) ($165 total!)

1 st Place Prize – LadyBugBot by isotope

Vadim ‘isotope’ says, “Regarding how the idea of building LadyBugBot came to me… It did as all brilliant ideas come, when I was opening my fridge to get another beer, I saw a tiny ladybug magnet… At that very moment, my Muse dropped a construction brick on my head, and I told myself I’m going to build a robotic fridge magnet! And I did it! )))”

Vadim has been interested in electronics since an early age, but didn’t start building robots till well after college when he stumbled across the website letsmakerobots.com. Now it’s his hobby of choice.

LadyBugBog wins:

Penguin Robot Extreme NXT(donated by Apress), Wall Hugging Mouse Kit (donated by Zagros Robotics), LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots (donated by No Starch Press) ($268 total!)

Grand Prize Winner – Walkin’ Sticks by ButchAlline

ButchAlline says, “This is a very simple crawler robot using three servos and a Basic Stamp 2. It can do most of the moves of the 16 servo hexapods at one tenth the price. Next step is to add radio control and maybe a camera.”

Butch is a 71 year old, retired mechanical engineer. He says, “I have always had an interest in electronics, got a ham license 40 years ago, and have flown RC planes for the last 25 years.” He got into robotics after buying a Basic Stamp II and workbook. He built “Walkin’ Sticks” after being shocked at the price of commercial hexapod robots.

Walkin’ Sticks wins:

Vex Dual Controller Starter Bundle with RobotC (donated by Vex Robotics) ($500 USD!)

Congratulations to you all! Below is the list of the top 15 by score. The results were very close! You’ll notice that our grand prize winner, Walkin’ Sticks, was actually 3rd place by score, but due to import/export restrictions, the Grand Prize can only go to a US resident.

Top Winners:

Check out some of the new robots added to RobotBox. For those that don’t know, RobotBox is a new community website for robot builders to show off their projects and inspire other builders. You can add your robot here.

RobotBox user jbot added a nifty blog post today about using his robot to paint with light. Inspired by images of Roomba’s with LEDs, he added a set of LEDs to his robot, PlexiBot and took some long exposure photos as PlexiBot traveled around. The results are quite beautiful.

Hey loyal readers, I need your help. You may have noticed that things have been a bit quiet around here for a while – a long while, actually. The reason for this is that I’ve been working on another robotics project, and I need your help testing it out.  The project is a new robotics website called RobotBox. It’s a cross between a community website and portfolio for robot builders. RobotBox rose from the ashes of, the now defunct, Robot Directory, but is much much better.

RobotBox lets you showcase your robotic creations to the world. It’s designed to inspire new (and old) robot builders by giving them neat creations to check out. There are already quite a few robots on the site, and I’d love it if you added yours. Registration is super simple, and you can then upload your robot projects.

The site is still a work-in-progress, so here’s what I need from you – feedback! I want to know what you like, what you don’t like, and what features you want to see added. Basically I want to know if the site is useful, and what I can do to make it better.

You can leave comments below, use twitter, or email. Thanks!

Yes yes, I know. I’m late. Way late. All that good food, relaxation, and working on secret projects fogged my brain a bit. I promise I’ll try and make it up to you this year, because 2009 is special. “Why?”, you ask. Well, for several reasons:

1. 2009 is the 9th anniversary of GoRobotics.net. 10th, actually, if you count the year that we were called “Robot-Central”. NINE YEARS?! Wow! Time has flown, and for the most part, it’s been an enjoyable 9 years. I’m looking forward to 9 more – will the internet even be around by then? Maybe I’ll be writing the first post of 2018 from space or deep underground.

2. We’ve seen some good upward growth this past year, since I started writing regularly and we moved to WordPress.  Modest growth, but still growth. We had an 11% increase in visitors over 2007, and that’s even with some major hickups from moving to a new server.

3. 2009 should see the launch of my new secret project.  I’m really excited about this one. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. What’s it about? Well, robots, for one, and maybe somewhat related to this guy too. When I’m ready to start testing the site, I’m giving you, my faithful readers, first dibs on getting in on the beta. Shoot me an email, or follow me on Twitter to get on “the list.”

So, thanks to all of you for making 2008 a great year. I’m looking forward to all the robot goodness in 2009.