About

Our Story

In 2005, at the request of numerous FIRST LEGO League® teams, Maine Robotics developed a spring time activity to keep Maine youth active in the robotics realm for a second season. Having run the FLL since 2000 in Maine, we knew we wanted something that would be easy on the adults, but rewarding and fun for the youth.

The result was the start of the Maine Robotics Track Meet program. In 2017 we chose to expand the program outside of Maine and worked to refine our rule book and update our website. As part of the expansion we also changed the name to the ROBOT TRACK MEET ASSOCIATION. We hope in twenty years we'll see track meets across the country and across all age groups.

The Robot Track Meet Association operates out of the USM Portland Campus where Maine Robotics is now headquartered. Maine Robotics and the Robot Track Meet Association are now both part of the USM STEM Outreach Program.

T H E T E A M

Our Founder

Tom Bickford - Director

Tom has been an educator since 1984 when he graduated from the University of Maine. But he did take a while out to go back and get his master's degree in Biomedical Engineering. Tom built the world's first ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) telemedicine system while at the University of North Carolina and went on to help the University of Texas greatly expand their telemedicine system in South Texas.
In 2000, Tom returned to Maine and started educational outreach programs while at the University of Maine, and in 2004 started up the non-profit Maine Robotics company to continue and expand the work.

In 2020, Tom took a new position at the University of Southern Maine as the Director for STEM Outreach in the College of Science, Technology, and Health.

Tom has also been programming computers since 1979 while still in high school and loves to teach coding to youth in Maine communities. You can reach Tom via his email

Giving an opportunity for youth to excel in engineering and computer science since 2005

Thousands of youth have build robots and bridges since we first offered the Robot Track Meets and we look forward to many thousands more as we move into the future!

Maine Robotics is done in collaboration with the University of Southern Maine