Quinn Norton on the O’Reilly network covers the 2005 RoboGames held at San Francisco State University. There’s robot combat action of course, but I really liked this one– Tirion, age ten, built his towel-carrying robot for the classic hacker’s reason–to scratch his own itch. He didn’t like getting cold between getting out of the pool and getting his towel, so he built a robot that could eventually bring him a towel. It’s not quite ready for poolside, but it took silver in the Mindstorms Open.