The KISS Institute for Practical Robotics team would like to thank all the amazing teams, coaches, parents, volunteers, and fans who helped make GCER 2025 a success!
We’ve added event photos to our Botball Flickr Gallery, so feel free to download and share your favorite moments! We are currently adding more photos to share, so keep checking back to view more. If you have photos or videos you would like to share, please email them to info@kipr.org.
If you have photos or videos you’d like to share, please send them to info@kipr.org.
A special thank you to Chen Zhengrong at ITCCC, the students at Noble Public Schools, and the students at Dunbar Intermediate School for helping capture this year’s amazing
Dr. Ross Mead has been an active participant in competition robotics since 2000, previously serving as a Botball competitor, game designer, and instructor. Since 2016, Dr. Mead has served on the KIPR Board of Directors.
Dr. Mead is the Founder and CEO of Semio, and the Executive Director of Semio Community. Semio is a for-profit Los Angeles-based robotics software startup defining the way in which people live, work, and play with robots in their everyday lives. Semio Community is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization facilitating community-driven robotics hardware, software, and studies to foster reproducible, replicable, and generalizable science within human-robot interaction (HRI).
Dr. Mead received his PhD and MS in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2015, and his BS in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2007. His dissertation work focused on socially assistive robots, specifically, on the principled design and computational modeling of fundamental social behaviors (such as speech, gestures, eye gaze, social spacing, etc.) that serve as building blocks for autonomous face-to-face human-robot interactions. His research provides the foundations upon which Semio software is being built.
Dr. Mead also serves as the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Los Angeles (AI LA), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that facilitates discussions surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact in the Greater Los Angeles (LA) community and beyond. In 2018, he co-founded the Social Robot Community Slack team to spark an international community around robotics and multimodal natural language technologies. Previously, Dr. Mead also served as a scientific and technical advisor to Disney (Big Hero 6), National Geographic (ROBOTS 3D IMAX), and Intel, among others, and was a contestant on Syfy’s Robot Combat League.
Sabri Sansoy is a robotics innovator and AI engineer with a career spanning aerospace, defense, entertainment, and education. A graduate of MIT (S.M. Aeronautics & Astronautics) and the University of New Mexico (B.S. Astrophysics), he brings a systems-level approach to designing intelligent machines that solve real-world problems.
Sabri leads the AI and robotics division at Brecourt Solutions, where his team is developing a groundbreaking AI system for detecting active weapon shooters using computer vision and behavioral recognition—a platform designed to enhance public safety in schools and urban environments. He is also co-founder of NewMexico.ai, a mission-driven company helping small businesses and industries adopt practical AI and robotics solutions.
His portfolio includes self-targeting aerial and ground-based robots for AI vs. Humans (Ridley Scott), AI-powered sanding robots for manufacturing, and an interactive color-shifting dress powered by IBM Watson for the Met Gala. He has competed on BattleBots with Team GhostRaptor, bringing hands-on robotics experience to global audiences.
Sabri’s work has been featured in WIRED, Santa Fe Reporter, and The Albuquerque Journal. He has presented at CES, VIVA Technology Paris, and the Fast Company Innovation Festival. Whether developing surveillance UAVs or building inspection bots for fusion reactors, Sabri is driven by a passion to inspire the next generation of roboticists.
Below are PDFs and videos for the paper track presentations. If you have questions, please contact us at info@kipr.org.
Analyzing Robotic Sensor Values for Enhanced Performance (PDF)
Aaron Xie, Alan Gao
Real-Time Control of Multiple Servo Motors (PDF)
Rocky Ratia
Aloy Kimball
Robotics Applications in Asteroid Mining (PDF)
Samuel DeGroot
Teaching JBC and Botball Movement Commands: A Scope and Sequence from Beginner to Advanced
Roger Clement
Muyao Zhang, Neo Lu, Ya Jin
A Next.js Blockly-Based C++ Code Generator for a Custom Robotics Library (PDF)
Leopold Kernegger, Ankush Ahuja
Applied Machine Learning in Sensor Calibration – A Clustering Technique (PDF)
Abigail Liu, Aaron Xie, Oliver Jiang
Choros: A Distributed Coordination Framework for Multi-Robot Botball Systems (PDF)
Ankush Ahuja, Leopold Kernegger
Tobias Madlberger, Leander Klik, Matthias Greil
Real-Time Robot Localization on the Botball Table Using a USB Camera and CNNs (PDF)
Tobias Madlberger, Leander Klik, Johanna Pucher
Wombat Mecanum Wheel Control System: Implementation and Omnidirectional Motion Algorithms
Oscar Yan, Muyao Zhang, Oliver Yan