Robotics contests up to 2004

197- Micromouse competitions begin in Japan. In these contests, the idea seems to be to do a first run, where the robot learns the maze, then a second run for speed. The speed runs have gotten astonishingly fast.

1978 Survival Research Laboratories performance art often involving destroying robots creatively (for perspective, Beyond Thunderdome came out in 1985)
1987 Critter Crunch was sponsored by the Denver Mad Scientist Society (quirky rules prevented it from taking off, but these are my kind of people)

1989 Project FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) This was how I first learned of  Dean Kamen ( The Segway guy, and top of my list)

1993 BEST robotics

1994 Robot Wars created by Marc Thorpe, but Thorpe had a fight with his backers Profile Records, and moved to England, there is much drama.

1997 Robot Wars the tv show from England without consent from Marc Thorpe

(here there was a giant explosion of multiple robotics competitions from middle school, to college, no doubt inspired by the tv show, I know I loved it.)

1997 Robocup

1997 Botball

1998 FIRST lego league

1999 Battlebots by the people who once worked with Marc Thorpe.

2001 Robotica

2003 Robot Fighting League (UK)

2003 Fighting Robot Association (USA)

2003 Roaming Robots

2004 Robogames

2004 DARPA Grand Challenge driver less cars

Each image links to a video.