[Travis Hoffman]

I and another Team 48 engineer were asked to drive our old robots to serve as simulated competition for our new bot during preseason driver practice. It was apparent to all who were in attendance that the "old" guys (old meaning 26), driving a less maneuverable bot with a dying battery, drove circles around all of our prospective student drivers who were piloting xtremachen6. Crafty engineers rock! To their credit, our final student drive team did a great job during the regular season. It sure would be fun to see how the mentors do driving in a postseason competition. One caveat - 45 year old geezers serving as human players might be a painful thing to watch (the words "slipped disc" and "pulled hamstring" come to mind). Teams might want to consider using their young-ish "college"-type engineers for that task. :-)

What I'd like to see is a timed obstacle course set up on the field at one of these events where engineers and their "inferior" student driver buddies get a chance to compete directly against each other. It would also be entertaining to watch those teams who build duplicate bots pit their student drive team against their engineers during the same match. I wonder if there would be anything left of their robots after such a battle.

Which brings to mind this question - which of these two bots would win if they were paired against each other during a match - the sturdy and powerful Mighty Auk.....or the fast and insanely maneuverable Mighty Mouse? Which one would the TechnoKat students prefer to drive, and which one would the engineers select? Hmm......