First Robot Olympics

[12] The event was conceived and directed by Dr Peter Mowforth, director of the Turing Institute, as an events-based meetup for robot enthusiasts and builders.

[15] Many of the robots that came to the event reflected key research themes that were present at the time.

For example, the two-wheeled balancing 'torch carrying' (pre-Segway) robot[16] that opened the event was associated with the institute's work on using machine learning applied to the inverted pendulum[17] Strathclyde University was an academic associate of and adjacent to the Turing Institute.

NatWest Bank Prize for Technology Transfer Olaf Beck, Prof. Rodney Brookes & Colin Angle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, AI Lab, USA Awarded with a Caithness Crystal bowl and £200 from NatWest Bank.

As well as being organised by The Turing Institute and hosted by the University of Strathclyde, the event had seven main sponsors: