Mike Onslow & Bryan Kilburn

Mike is the creator and driving force behind the DAVE project. Larger than life, Mike’s irrepressible personality and enthusiasm will see DAVE move from an ambitious concept to become reality. With his team-mate Bryan Kilburn, Mike created the well-known Plunderbird series of robots for Robot Wars, winning the award for Best Design in the first ever series. The Plunderbird image and the dubious songs which go with it are legendary in robotic circles.

A talented sculptor and mould-maker by profession, he is also an excellent all-round engineer. Mike is constructing the base unit and will use his skills to create some of the more intricate parts such as the head and other detailed body mouldings. Mike will oversee the project and will be largely responsible f or DAVE’s persona and for guiding the development of DAVE in the desired direction.

 John & Jacky Willoughby

Although a software developer by trade, John likes nothing better than to be busy tinkering with an engineering project. He has a lifetime of experience gained from a fascination for electronics and a passion for machinery of any kind. He owns a classic American Ford Mustang which he has renovated, doing all his own welding and mechanics. It won an award for best in it’s class and has been featured in a national car magazine.

Assisted by his wife and team-mate Jacky, he has campaigned his fighting robot, the Steel Avenger, in six series of Robot Wars, picking up the Best Engineered Robot award in series 4. The body armour he made also won him the Best Costume award in Robot Wars Extreme.

John will bring his wealth of practical knowledge to the project to help design and build the mechanical systems and achieve the seemingly impossible to bring DAVE to life.

 George Francis

George has become something of a celebrity over the past few years after competing in Robot Wars from it’s conception, and then creating the famous Chaos 2 machine which won the title for two years running. The robot also received the Best Engineering award for series 3. George is a skilled engineer who has a diversity of interests including quantum mechanics and piloting light aircraft and often ponders the existence, or otherwise, of free will - presumably because he chooses to.

George worked with Ian to build over 30 autonomous ‘predator and prey’ robots for the Magna exhibition in the north of England, comissioned by Professor Noel Sharkey. He has worked as a key member of the technical crew on several Techno Games and Robot Wars productions. George is also an expert in the use of PICs and control electronics and will design and build the motor control systems.

 Ian Swann

Ian is a multi-talented individual who can turn his hand to many things. He can cook a meal to rival anything a professional chef could put together. He has an interest in astronomy and physics and, along with team-mate George, has helped to take their robot Chaos 2 to the top of the sport and win the Robot Wars championship in series 3 and 4. He has done a lot of work with schools as part of a national project assisting young students to design and build machines to compete in the BBC Technogames series, also making a set of unique microprocessor-based trophies for the winners. Ian has built his own pair of walking legs called ‘Mincer’.

He has written a number of articles for Real Robots magazine and is currently involved in the setting-up of a new competition called the UK Robotic Games. Ian is a skilled electronics and software engineer and is an expert in the use of programmable ICs (PICs). Ian’s specialist area will be in the creation of the interface and control systems for DAVE.

 Laurie Calvert

Laurie Calvert is both a film maker since 1978 and a roboteer. As a professional film maker he has had much work shown on TV world-wide and worked on five feature films. As an amateur he has won over 30 film awards and just made a feature length movie for which he has achieved much acclaim. In Techno Games he has won three medals (each colour), a sportsmanship award and set a world record. In Robot Wars he headed

team Lightning, a robot which reached the Heat finals in the 2004 series and whose build was charted by Discovery Channel. For the DAVE team he can record the progress on video to produce background archive material second to none plus produce creative video material to market. His robot skills, team working experience and pro-active approach will add strength and a fresh approach to the project.

 All text and images © the DAVE project team 2004