Steve and Ted’s Excellent Adventure which they call “BEST Robotics” began in 1993. The story begins something like this…

Two young Texas Instruments (TI) engineers, Ted Mahler and Steve Marum, were serving as guides for Engineering Day at their company site in Sherman, Texas. Together with a group of high school students, they watched a video of freshmen building a robot in Woodie Flowers’ class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The high school students were so interested that Ted and Steve said, “Why don’t we do this?”

With enthusiastic approval from TI management, North Texas BEST was born. The first competition was held in 1993 with 14 schools and 221 students (including one team from San Antonio).

Listen to their story

Watch the video

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Now 30 years after beginning the BEST program, Steve and Ted shed some light on where it has come and where is should go in the future.