[rfolea]

We do several things in this area.

1. Recruit school teams to do single day robot merit badge camps. They use it as a fund raiser and community out reach and Scouts are happy to pay $25 to come do it. win win.

2. Summer Camp. We got a local sponsor to donate a few thousand dollars so we could purchase a dozen vex kits to use for robotics merit badge at summer camp. During the off months those kits are available for anyone to use. Each kit is in a covenient tupper waretub and easy to transport. The key here is to make doing inventory part of the closing task.

In one day we can. usually build two robots, have two or three mini competitions, and cover all the requirements.

3. If the kids have already done programming merit badge, then simply reviewing that and the required documentation is all you need.

FYI ... we just launched the programming merit badge at the jamboree. We had the kids program vex robotic arms, PLCs (factory controllers) and arduino embedded processors. The scouts thought that was awesome. We ran over 820 Scouths through that booth. Many of those scouts then went next door and did the robotics merit badge where they got credit for programming. (robotics used te new vexiq).