Battle Bots
 

Okay, okay - I admit it. I watched Battle Bots this evening (which some may call treason). One thing that struck me though was that they said that over 500 different bots participated this season. Sounds like FIRST may not be able to say that they are the largest robotic competition for much longer. Think that FIRST can stay on top?

~Tom Fairchild~, who isn't a big Battle Bot fan but watches now and then.

500??
 

I wonder if all 500 hundred of those battlebots compete??? (that would be a lot of robot smashin :D )

But i think that FIRST can probably stay on top even if they do limit things like they did for this upcoming season....

You know the punishment for treason is 11 lashings with a wet noodle...lol...sorry, i had to say that. Anyway, in a post in the general forum it said that FIRST has 652 teams registered to attend at least one regional. So we beat battlebots :) Further, I think that even if BattleBots had more robots, FIRST would still 'stay on top' because of the quality and overall purpose of the orginazation. I suppose that I'm pretty bias though....

While battlebots may or may not have more robots competing over the course of one year, let's consider the average lifespan of each battlebot.

Not very long :eek:

Let's say a battlebot somehow survives for a whole 3 months before it is killed by another robot. Now let's make an even more ludicrous assumption and say that all battlebots live for this long.

Thus, we can multiply the average lifespan of a robot to the number of robots to find out how many robots at any given time alive and having an influence in the world:
Battlebots: (0.25 years/robot)(500 robots) = 125
FIRST: (1 year/robot)(500 robots) = 500

Thus at any given time FIRST has 4 times as many functional robots in existance :) This is just one way that FIRST is bigger. Look at the # of matches held per year. FIRST probably blows battlebots away. Look at # of people involved. Battlebots has many fewer people per team, so FIRST is bigger in that sense as well.

Patrick

As you can plainly tell by looking at my avatar <--- , I watch BattleBots. If you watched it last night, Tuesday, November 27, Bill Dweyer went back to his college to check out their robot. When the segment ended, he noted that they lost in pre-qualifing. I may be wrong, but I think that only the top 20 (ish) robots make it past pre-qualifing in their weight class. With six or eight weeks of shows, including the special hour-long finals shows, there is only room for a certain number of the better robots to fit into the season of shows, so the majority of robots are KOed from the competition in the pre-qualifing, or seeding, matches.

PS: I watch BattleBots because I feel that I can learn a bit of strategy from it, in some way or another.

although you have to admit it is kind of funny watching the hundreds of hours of work being destroyed in 3 minutes or less..lol

That's actually my main problem with Battlebots and the like...I personally can't justify putting that much time into a project, knowing that it will be most likely be coming home in pieces...

What do you actually lose?
 

I think that it's hard to see unless you compete, but the value of the robot is in the journey not the destination (it's "path dependent" for you physics types.)

When you lose your entire robot you still have the journey and everything you learned. Consequently building that same robot would be much easier, cheaper, and faster the second time around. Most builders don't just rebuild their robot of course. They set out on another journey to improve, thus learning more and making a better robot.

This is one aspect of the destruction I think Dean would appreciate. You better believe he has tested IBot to destruction to find it's limits; this is the same idea except it's entertaining too.

With all this said BattleBots is expensive and of course you risk losing a lot of expensive stuff during any given match. But realistically the damage is usually structural.

The core parts of a BattleBot (electronics, motors, batteries) last just as long as any FIRST robot and even better you don't have to buy a whole new (but mostly identical) kit every year.

Standard disclaimer: FIRST is cool, BattleBots is cool. But they shouldn't be compared or compete with one another.

Dan

basically what i ment was that i like seeing how crazy people are that they can get their hundreds of hours of work destroyed in 3 minutes...i would never do it..im not that crazy

I agree with BSMFIRST. It is a widely known philosophy (if you could call it that) of the reward being in the journey. Their journey is pretty similar to ours. While they're a different age group and are building for a completely different purpose, we're both learning teamwork and enjoying engineering. Yes, perhaps their robots get destroyed in a three minute competition, but lets be honest here...after nationals ours, in a way, are destroyed too. Sure, many teams, including ours, use it for a lot like driver training, publicity, and a general tutorial for the newbs, but it no longer serves the purpose for which it was originally created. I'm sure this will stir up some opinions, which are more than welcome. Please don't misinterpret me though, I love "Li'l MOE" - and always enjoy seeing it and driving it around. Just wanted to give some credit to the Battle Bots people, as the reward is truely in the journey - one which is not that different from our own.

Annoying
 

Whenever I go canning and say the word "robotics", people automatically say "YOU'RE IN BATTLEBOTS?!?" and then I explain how its FIRST Robotics and explain it...and then they say "oh..." and walk away.

Guaranteed to happen.

All people want is wanton destruction, not something beneficial such as this.

Ticks me off...:mad: :mad: :mad:

Battlebots is on top because of popularity.

Do you think that FIRST would be much more popular without BattleBots? Do you think the public would have a greater appreciation of engineers without BattleBots?

When you see a little kid nervously ask a BattleBots builder for an autograph and run off in delight when they get it...it's pretty hard to think of BattleBots as such a bad thing.

Dean always talked about creating a "professional" level FIRST competition that high school kids could aspire to compete in, like the major leagues. What BattleBots did is build the major leagues first and now they're creating the minor leagues (BBIQ.)

Also, I am confident BattleBots & Ginger will pave the way for FIRST's big TV break.

Dan

I think more people would know about FIRST, but popularity wise? Probably not.

I never said BB was a bad thing--it gets really annoying when thats all people ask me.

At this rate, I'm not sure we'll get a big TV break, but it doesn't matter, as long as FIRST lives on.

Re: Annoying
 

I get a similar response from most people. It really *IS* quite irksome. I don't think that Battle Bots and FIRST Robotics are mutually exclusive at all, but people seem more apt to flock towards the Comedy Central hoo-hah (the "announcers" in suits always crack me up). Then again, FIRST Robotics hasn't really been displayed on TV much (as far as I know). Mabye this walking away reaction is just a classic case of pre-judgement? With that bridge last season, there was plenty of carnage in FIRST for me! 8)

Then we will run them over...lol :D :) :p

Yeah, whenever I mention the words "robotics competition" Battlebots is the first thing out of the other persons mouth. So now I just make sure I add "and it's not Battlebots" before they get to say anything. But, honestly, the thing that would bother me about doing Battlebots instead of FIRST is that I don't think I could stand to see my robot get ripped apart after spending such a long time building. That would probably make me cry or something.

~Christina

Yeah.....
 

I've also experienced this first hand at a large event. It was the Assembly Technology Expo in Chicago, IL. We had our bot at the IPS booth and there was a battle bot at the Loctite booth....i bet i was asked if we were a battle bot or i heard them talking about it as they walked by more than 50 times. I know DJ knows what i'm talking about and Andy probably does too.

:cool:

Well, you can just do what I do -

I tell them that I am involved in a robotics competition - and then I tell them that it's a lot more difficult than Battlebots. I think it is, and if they're impressed by the Battlebots, they're in awe of anything that's more complex.

LoL, I definitly think that there's no reason to have a poll if you've ever had someone ask, "Do you do BattleBots?" or something of that sort. I've done more demonstrations than I can remember, and that's the stand first question out of EVERYONE's mouth. There's nothing wrong with BattleBots, but you just get tired explaining that you're not a part of it - and watching people go "oh...:(" (Gotta love that disappoint look that always seems to appear).

~Tom Fairchild~, who thinks that robotic competitions, no matter which organization they might be in, are here to stay.

I don't know, it seems like no one ever believes me when I say it's better than battle bots. I usually get the "well, do you get to beat up the other robot?" And when I say "not really" that's when I get the second disappointed look and that's where the conversation usually ends. Even if I do say, "But...but...it's better...I promise!" Doesn't quite seem to get them.

~Christina

Fighting Robots
 

Well since FIRST is only a seasonal competition our school is thinking about letting us enter Battle Bots soon. This is so the team doesn't lose interest during the summer and the preseason months. Also, it will help us with possible strategies that can be applied to FIRST as well as experiment with new parts and the way they function.

Re: Fighting Robots
 

Well, that's why I'm going to try to get my school involved with post season competitions. This way the team still has reason to be working on our robot and everything.

~Christina

Aye--people think violence is better.

They think that beating up another robot is much harder than working through a complex and challenging game with unknowns (allies) with a limited amount of parts and money, and a very limited amount of time.

They tend to stop listening as soon as I say that in the past couple of years, teams have had allies, or at the word "game".

I think it's time to face the facts.. Battlebots are to society now, what Gladiatorial killings were to the romans.. The fact that it was picked up by Comedy Central is center to this whole influx of intrest in machines that can beat the tar out of each other.. the fact still remains, though, that we of FIRST will get the heads up when it comes to the finer things, such as education and job offerings.. Most of the people who participate in Battlebots have careers, and money with which to build the robot.. Who knows, if we had a national cable sponsor, like MTV per se, FIRST might just get what it deserves...

We had ESPN up until '99.

Why must BattleBots be considered bad?
 

IMHO, and yes I realize that this is not concurrent with Dean's feelings, but robots battling is not violence. Destruction? Yes, but not violence. Woodie Flowers spoke out against war reenactments at Nationals last year. Once again, I do not consider it violence. Robots are not people. Is it silly to build a robot only to have it destroyed during a competition? Last year I would have said yes, but more and more I think that its no less silly than devoting 6 weeks of your life to a robot to only have it compete in three or so competitions. FIRSTers love to talk about how much learning they get from their projects and I could not agree more. But the common consensious seems to be that FIRSTers seems to think that they learn more than Battlebot fighters. Its like comparing passenger jets to fighter jets. Both are complex in their own ways.
In all though, FIRST robots do seem to be much more complex final products (I cannot say better since it really is apples and oranges). I cannot praise FIRST enough for the lessons that it has taught me, and the fact that it has guided me to seek a career in engineering. But to see FIRST as the one of only to me just seems foolish.

~Tom Fairchild~, who is extremely glad that the "violent" sport of football is on TV instead of the Polo.

P.S. forgive any mispellings that I might have made in there! And please remember, this is all IMHO!

Clark is right....... i dont know how many times i heard the question "Is this a battle bot?" or "What weapon do you guys use?"

The battlebot in the loctite booth was Vladiator....it was only the shell of it...but it was authentic, with actual battle scars...

Re: Why must BattleBots be considered bad?
 

This is a great way of looking at it. I also agree most FIRST bots are more complex in structure. There is a minimum threshold of complexity in BattleBots that is pretty low (like you could just build a robot in the pits like I pretty much did) but there is no ceiling to how much time and thought can be put into even the most simple looking design.

Maybe you have to compete in BattleBots a bit to realize the amazing attention to detail that went into Vladiator--and this is just a box with a poker on the front.

BattleBots offers a huge amount of freedom; so it is up to you to decide what problems you want to tackle and how much you want to learn. The event itself is almost a celebration of your robot's completion with the rest of the builders. The actual fights are just entertainment and closure to your building cycle.
It's whole lot of fun.

Dan

I myself prefer the old-school Vlad the Impaler. I don't know why, but I love the classic robots from both FIRST and the "fighting" shows. Let's see, there's Roadblock, Cassius, the original Panic Attack, Killerhurtz. Wow, this brings back memories...

Minion was always my favorite

Last night while waiting for Junkyard Wars finally saw Robotica (I think I spelled that right). Anyway it seemed to combine aspects of FIRST and battle Bots. FIRST because there was an obstacle course and you had to build your robot to overcome the various challenges battle Bots because you had eventual contact between the robots without as much destruction

ps: my fav Battle Bots are Son of Whyachi, Dead Blow, and Toro

Yea, Robotica is getting better. And, maybe it's not obvious yet, but they are trying to make it educational and cool. The new season and the next season were filmed this fall, but the next season will probably be filmed before summer.

They said they would like FIRST teams when I had talked to them; they're looking for good robots and good people with interesting stories. I figure you guys could provide both.

Dan

And robots don't get destroyed on Robotica. As much as I hate the final battle (knocking the opponet off the ledge) because it's usually too one sided and no maneuvering room, it could be worse. Actually, if it were the size of the Battlebox, it'd be kinda cool.

Um...

If we all pay attention, we can get why battle-bots are so popular. Look at wrestling. It is violence. A "good" violence. (note the quotes :) ) If we think, the violence that is on TVs are popular. Look at wrestling. They rake in BILLIONS (kan't spel) of dollars, and it is all fake!! I think the public just wants to take some anger out on a nother thing, and just viewing the violence, or anger, helps out a lot. I am not saying battle-bots are bad, but violence is the root of it all...

Uh, professional wrestling isn't fake. It's just fixed. The wrestlers put their bodies through hell just to entertain us. And you have to give both Battlebots & pro wrestling credit: they entertain us. They also draw in billions.

wrestling is not a sport eddie!! remember these threads?

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ight=wrestling
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ight=wrestling

Yes, but it still requires a great deal of athletics.

People fighting is violence. Robots fighting is destruction. The distinction between the two is very significant. How it is significant though, is up to the reader.l

~Tom Fairchild~, who believes that violence only applies to the living.

pro wrestling is an insult to the real wrestlers...as a fan of true wrestling...i am insulted and disgusted with the WWF and whatever the other companies are called....

but the XFL was kind of entertaining...u have to admit that...

"What about the XFL? That was a big joke. Now, I've seen comedians, but you're just great."

- Jay Leno to Jesse Ventura

I really didn't like the XFL. I'd also like to point out that the professional wrestlers put careers, bodys, and sometimes even lives on the line so they can put on a good show. Show me a real wrestler who does that. If you look at what goes on behind it, you'd appriciate it more. Not to say I don't like real wrestling. I do like that too. I just happen to like the other stuff as well.

Back to the Battlebots thread....

While watching the Critic at 1am on Comedy Central on Saturday Morning like i always do, I saw a commercial for Battlebots new season....this year Carmen Electra has joined into Battlebots as an announcer....FIRST needs a celebrity endorcement if they want to keep up. Getting Carmen Electrica as an announcer, that now increases viewers for more reasons...

Perhaps, but I'd rather that the people who come to watch FIRST come to see our robot, rather than leer at something else.

I know that.....but if FIRST got a celebrity endorsement the publicity would go up and more people would see it and realize that it even exists....when Clark and I were at the engineering expo in chicago, it was so frustrating hearing all these "dignified" sales people and engineers ask us about battlebots and what our weapon was.

TOYS
 

Haven't any of you ever seen those Battle bots toys in the stores these days!! They even spin and hit stuff! I bought one just because I want FIRST to start up that kinda stuff!! I mean I would love to see one our robots made into a kids toy. Maybe even have Burger King put them in there happy meals lol!

Here is a link to those toys!

http://battlebots.com/store/store_se...sults.asp?ID=5

oops
 

I forgot to add that they even have miniature radio control bots!! I can just image my little brother driving a little robot against me in a little arena! haha lol and these bots even die after so many hits cool eh?