R. Steven Rainwater

VEX Worlds 2015
June 2015
Highlights of this STEM inspired event.

The VEX 2013 World Championships
June 2013
See highlights from this year’s classic event.

Open Source Hardware for Robot Projects
June 2013
Did you know that there are community-developed hardware robot designs that are freely licensed and downloadable? If not, you need to check out this overview of different platforms that have been developed over the last two decades.

The ASABE Student Robotics Competition
October 2012
Each year, the American Society of Agricultural & Biological Engineers hosts a student contest which has a dif ferent agricultural theme. This year, participants had to navigate a scale model of a feedlot.

2011 VEX Robotics World Championship
July 2011
Over 10,000 participants joined in this classic competition that included not only VEX events, but also BEST match-ups, Coast Guard AROW water robots, plus the first Boy Scouts to earn the new robotics badge.

MAKER Fair
February 2008
What do robots have in common with recycled clothes, root beer, and medieval siege weapons? Why are the creators of these wonderfully interesting things suddenly more visible than they were in the past? What is Hyperbolic Origami? These are a few of the questions I pondered as I drove from Dallas to Austin, TX for the 2007 Austin Maker Faire. I had just returned from a road trip to Marfa, TX for the annual Chinati Open House art festival. It struck me as I took in the art and talked to the ...

Why Just Build a Robot? Be a Robot!
Column: Appetizer
November 2008
A-Kon is North America’s longest running national anime convention. It was first held in 1990 and it has been growing ever since...