Gordon McComb, who's been dubbed "the father of hobby robotics," has been building robots since the 1970s, and wrote the best-selling Robot Builders Bonanza . For MAKE Volume 27 Gordon wrote a how-to article called Teleclaw: Remote Robot Gripper, which is controlled with an ordinary TV remote.
Tell us a bit about yourself — where you live, what you do for a living, what you are interested in?
I come from San Diego, California, best known for its climate, but it's also a great place if you're a robot builder. That's thanks to the US Navy, and all the military surplus it generates. Cheap parts for projects are never far away.
When I'm not building, I'm usually busy writing about something. It might be a book — I've done over 60 so far, and new things keeps coming out that I want to write about. I did a 13-year stint as a weekly newspaper columnist, all about computers. I've written all kinds of articles for magazines like Popular Science, and I'm jazzed about doing builder projects, like the Teleclaw, for MAKE.
