At SMART Labs our philosophy is to innovate, create and learn while having fun. We are passionate about Robotics and very grateful for the opportunities that Robofest offers us. Our team acronym S.M.A.R.T. stands for:

  • Science - Science gives us the fundamental understanding of the laws physics , chemistry and materials behind the way things work.

  • Math - Mathematics offers us the tools to help with our understanding.

  • Art - Art helps us be creative and helps make learning fun and applicable.

  • Robotics - Robotics helps blend everything that we learned into a practical usable item. We apply what we learn and love into robotics.

  • Technology - Technology offers us a way to enable our dreams. Ways to program, connect and communicate come from technology.

We learn through the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and rapid design cycles. We plan our work, build a demonstration unit, debug this and identify improvements.

SMART Labs "Game Night" Team

12/20/20 Be prepared for some very interesting videos and tutorials about computer vision and how it can be applied to playing games. Our team has been busy learning OpenCV and Pygame to create an interactive gaming environment with computer vision, computer controlled motion and interactivity of Game Night to the next level! The games include:

Learn OpenCV

12/10/2020 We've added a page with links to great tutorials for anyone looking to learn OpenCV. Many thanks to PyImageSearch.com

Enfield Automatons Innovation 1st!

10/17/20 At the Robofest World Championship awards ceremony Robofest announced a new category for Sr. Game. Due to the rules controversy and the team's innovation this new category recognized the team for the high score in the competition while not penalizing the other teams. Note the scores listed below as the team outscored the first place time by 8.5 points!

Enfield Automatons Controversy

10/14/20 Robofest determined that the Enfield Automaton robot had an unfair advantage in the Sr. Game competition. Their scores will not count in the standard Sr. Game. Robofest officials were amazed with your innovation:

Dr. CJ Chung, founder of Robofest, had this to say on your out-of-the-box thinking::

"We were amazed at your team's idea of blowing air."

Dr. Cartwright defended the "intent" of the rules and explained we were to follow the rules for real bowling and real golf while admitting that the rules were not clear.

"the rules state (not clearly enough, I am forced to admit) that the bottles must be knocked over by 'bowling'"

Be proud of your accomplishment.

First Round Score: 112

Second Round Score: 111

Average Score: 111.5

The rules committee won't allow the score to stand in the standard competition for thinking outside the box. Remember that finding the exception to the rules and thinking outside the box is a trait of WINNERS. Consider yourselves in the company of some historically great and competitive teams.

Team Penske Wins Indy 500

In the 1994 Indianapolis 500 Team Penske dominated the field with the PC-23 engine (you can read about it here). Basically the rules allowed for more turbo boost if you ran a pushrod engine. The INTENTION of the rule was to give an advantage to the teams that ran a stock pushrod engine. Team Penske exploited this loophole by designing purpose built pushrod engine. It met the rules but was not what the rules committee had intended! The result was that the Penske team lapped the entire field and won the race.


Henry "Smokey" Yunick

Henry "Smokey" Yunick is known for favorable interpretation of the rules and stories about Smokey are legendary in the motorsports area. Wikipedia has a good article. The rules committee intended to limit the amount of fuel on a vehicle by specifying the maximum size of the fuel tank.

The story goes that Smokey was getting much better fuel economy than any of his competitors. The rules committee were very suspicious that his fuel tank was of illegal size. They inspected his car very well and even removed the fuel tank to verify the size and determined it was legal. What they didn't know at the time was that Smokey used fuel lines that were 2 inches in diameter to run from the tank to the engine! The rules committee never intended for teams to keep an extra 5 gallons of fuel in the fuel lines but no fuel line size was specified in the rules! Obviously if he had asked he would have been told that large diameter fuel lines would not be allowed.

2019-2020 RoboGolfBowl

10/10/20 Enfield Automatons - Amazing ghosts in the machine show up! With grippers never failing in months and fresh batteries in the gripper the gripper controller developed Parkinson's disease during round one and dropped the ball not once but twice during the round! Valiant efforts were made by Maria and Theodore to rebuild the motor mechanism during the work period during the second round. Amazingly the start and end tasks worked on the first try, but unfortunately the gripper fix didn't work. Still put up some great scores! Here's how the rounds should have gone with the griper fully working:

10/9/20 Camera Shy does well in first World Championship. Unlucky first round but the team had some fierce competition! Here's your amazing second round.

2019-2020 RoboBed

10/7/20 Maria and Shryia are interviewed by www.PyImageSearch.com. This is a great site for learning computer vision. You can read their interview here.


9/12/20 Robofest RoboMed compeition. Congratulations on a great job with your project!

8/10/20 Robofest GolfBowl Qualification - Results are in. Congratulations on winning the qualification rounds. Hard work and practice pays off. Keep practicing for the world championships in October.

2018-2019 Binary Blocks Team

9/13/19 IBM Detroit grand opening. SMART labs was thrilled to present the basics about Robofest and Binary Blocks at the IBM Detroit office grand opening. Please review our presentation and our tribute to 9/11 with our special twin towers routine.

5/18/19 The girls finished 4th at the World Championship in Binary Blocks. Stacked perfectly both runs!

2017-2018 Ready, Set, Grow!

4/10/18 We qualified for the US Virtual Regional!

4/15/18 Ready, Set, Grow! posted our qualification video. Please check it out and view our page.

2017-2018 Bobnix

4/14/15 - Bobnix team finishes second at the Sr. Game qualifier. Really tough competition. Good job!

Note: Lost to the the team that ended up winning it all at the world championships!

Connecting Lego Bricks

12/11/2017 Nicolae demonstrates how to connect two EV3 bricks together. This is a great way to add 4 more sensor ports and 4 more motor ports to your project for each EV3 brick that you add.

2016-2017 SMART Cookies

6/3/17 SMART Cookies had a great Robofest competition. Thank You St. Pete's Beach! We came home with a People's Choice award and 3rd place in Jr. Exhibition. Congratulations to the Tech Sisters for 1st place and to team STEAM for 2nd place.

2015-2016 Nano Penguins

Our first year in robotics!