Tom Bales (November 2, 1948-October 12, 2023) was a research and development biomedical engineer who served as a judge during the first BattleBots IQ competition in 2002.
He served as mentor for Ransom Everglades Robotics as Will and Max Bales represented their high school in a number of events with 15 and 120lb robots. Then-student Will Bales featuring heavily in the Bots High documentary covering BattleBots IQ 2011.
Tom Bales' sons with HyperShock and Mohawk.
Tom Bales (far left) among the judging panel for BattleBots IQ 2002.
He would continue his association with BattleBots as it returned to television screens in 2015, forming part of son Max Bales' team Euclid Robotics and Mohawk for the first three World Championships on ABC and Discovery. The team name derived from Euclid Laboratories - a sponsor of Mohawk and company Tom Bales was CEO of. Tom captained the team during World Championship III.
Following Mohawk's third and final season, Tom Bales was never formally listed as a Team HyperShock member. However, his son Greg Bales joined HyperShock in 2010 and both Max Bales and Tom's wife Connie were formally listed as team members ahead of World Championship VI.
Tom Bales sadly passed away in October 2023.
Outside BattleBots[]
Away from building robots, Tom Bales graduated in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked in the engineering industry for over 40 years. Some of his areas of expertise involved rocket science and various biomedical engineering projects. In 1993, he became president of the Symbiosis Foundation, which supports STEM-related educational projects for school children. He also worked as chief science officer for Syntheon - one of Mohawk's BattleBots sponsors - from 1998 until 2023.
As a keen ukulele player, he became chairman of the Ukulele Kids Club in 2017, volunteering himself to support and contribute to the organization's success during his six-year tenure. The organization aims to work with local hospitals across the world to supply ukuleles and aid mentally fragile children with music for their time in hospital and beyond. Over 15,000 ukuleles were donated as of August 2023. Following Tom's passing, money was raised to aid the organization.
Tom Bales also volunteered as a scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America for almost two decades, with sons Max and Greg Bales qualifying as eagle scouts.
Trivia[]
- Tom Bales was the developer of the world’s largest telescope project. The Energetic Ray Global Observatory had over 130 stations worldwide as of 2015.
- He has a total of 143 patents for biomedical surgical devices and rockets.