This nameless robot was the winner of the First AFOL Mindstorms Tournament held on 9-10 April 2005 in the Legoland Park in Billund. The task was quite simple: drop as many balls as possible on a "groove" and prevent the oppent from doing the same. It used two touch sensors in order to align to the wall and a light sensor (but it could have been a third touch sensor, forbidden by the rules) to sense the proper alignment to the groove. The navigation system was manly based on the three phases NNS algorithm and performed with an high degree of reliability: it never missed a single run and was lucky enough not to be "destroyed" by the opponents. Once the task was complete, of course the robot played the italian national anthem :-).
This is the "Mindstorms world champion" IT-Lug Team:

Mario Ferrari (Team leader, Chassis and 2nd pilot)

Giulio Ferrari (Tool building and rules study)

Paolo Masetti (HW/SW System integrator and 1st pilot)

Marco Beri (Strategic planning, food, rules study)

Dino Baldi (Tool building and logistics)

Samuele Vecchi (Chassis building)

Guido Truffelli (Software)

Diabolik performed well (3rd place) at the Rubacubetto II contest during Legofest XVI held on November 2003 in Crema.
The robot was equipped with two light sensors multiplexed with two touch sensors. It was a simple differential drive robot, that used the third motor for blocking or kicking away the LEGO cubes.
The software was the real strength of the machine, having a hierachycal menu system accessible using the touch sensors and the Prgm/View buttons of the RCX. Using this menu the pilot could configure all of the internal parameters or displaying all the sensors/battery readings.

4WD performed very well in the last edition of Grand PRIS during Legofest XIII held on November 2002 in Crema.
The front wheels were mounted directly on the motors shafts. These motors were connected to the chassis by a LEGO system turntable. The rear wheels were powered by the third motor trough a simple differential. This robot couldn't run faster than other competitors, but it could accelerate, brake and turn very quickly, so it outperformed all my previous robots:
it could complete a lap ALWAYS in less than 17 seconds (Alcor: 27 s, Boulder Mobile: 22 s).

Alcor performed very bad in the second edition of Grand PRIS during Legofest XI held on July 2002 in Modena. It was a simple differential drive robot with two wheels only, thus it was quite unstable: every single little collision made it drive the wrong way. Furthermore it wasn't responsive enough: the inability to brake in time inside the terrible chicane, caused too many stop and go penalties. I'll do better next time. :-)

Lassie performed very well at the "Roborimbalzo" (Robot-bounce) contest, held in Crema (Italy) on November 2001. The aim of the game was to drive straight against a wall at an unknown distance, turn back and return exactly on the starting point. You could use only one RCX, two touch sensors and one light sensor (no other sensors were allowed). Of course the sound track was the Lassie (come back home) theme.

Lupin III is the winner of the "Rubacubetto" contest, disputed during Legofest VIII held in Modena (Italy) on June 2001. The aim of the game was collecting lego cubes on the playfield, split in two areas (white and black) with a gray border, and pushing (not carrying) them on the appropriate starting area. The cubes were detected by an oscillating bumper, connected to a raw mode rotation sensor. They could by kicked away or captured by a simple pendulum like arm. The program was quite complex (11K of C source code for LegOS) and its main feature was a "virtual" gyroscope that helped the robot in minimizing the path back and forth between the two areas. Of course the sound track was the Lupin III cartoon theme, performed by Castellina Pasi.

Polifemo is my last (hopefully) Sumo wrestler. It won the contest held in Milano (Italy) on January 2001, hosted and sponsored by Lego Italy. It was built using RIS 1.0 exclusively, no extra components were allowed. It's key features were the shape (largely undertaken by most wrestlers) and the curious ability to use the light sensor in two ways: it was primarily used in order to prevent the robot from exiting the ring but, thanks to a simple but clever mechanism, it could be used for IR detection. It wasn't very fast, but thanks to its shape, only one enemy managed to catch it one time, but by chance it had no luck in pushing it out of the ring. On the other side, when Polifemo reached its preys, it never missed an easy win. :-)
This time I programmed the robot using NQC and MIDI2RCX generated The Bridge On the Kwai River theme.

CN is yet another Sumo wrestler. It performed very well, by chance it won the Legofest VI contest held in Cremona (Italy) on October 2000. It's basically a wedge driven by an RCX with three motors and six wheels (stolen from the good 8462 set). There are also a light sensor in order to detect the limit of the ring and a rotation sensor to measure speed and distance. Thanks to these data, the robot could figure out when it was stuck and try evasive moves, that worked fine quite luckily :-). The rules of the tournament imposed a maximun 32x32 studs base size and a 1.5 Kg weight. MIDI2RCX provided the soundtrack: Sinphony n.40 by W.A.Mozart. You can watch also a small movie(340K) of its best performance.

Death Star was my sumotori at Legofest V held in Carpi (Italy) on May 2000. It performed poorly as a sumo wrestler, but played very well the full Imperial March from Star Wars, thanks to MIDI2RCX.

The Entertainer was my challenger at Legofest IV held in Modena (Italy) on Mars 2000. It performed poorly as a line tracker, but played very well the full Entertainer song, thanks to MIDI2RCX.

Gradino is a little step climber. In its base version it can clib easily a 6 cm step, but with a simple adjustement of the lenght of the rear wheel support it climbed 10 cm without any problem.
You can see also a little movie(340K) of its performance.
This robot is RCXless, so it's also musicless :-)