[russell]

Yesterday I had to break the bad news to my team: The camera is not going on our bot. Too many problems. The first is where to put it. I wrote a program that I could adapt for our robot to use if I put the camera on top of our arm, and if I have time at our (one and only) regional I will set it up, but basically it aint gonna happen. But the reason I bring this up is that when I informed the dad who was there at the time (we dont have mentors) that the camera isnt going to be used he replied "but the camera is the coolest part!". And really I realised he is right. A few weeks ago we had to demonstrate our schools "alumni association" (whatever that is) in hopes of getting a huge sum of money from them, and we decided to demonstrate the camera. The problem was that the camera wasnt working. So while I fixed the camera, the build team drove around the practice bot (which we never finished). But the alumni association was less impressed with the working driveable bot than they were with the dysfunctional camera. The best thing we did that whole demo was have a "busted" camera (it was actually the backup battery).

The moral of the rather long and boring story: People think sensors are cool. Their eight year old kid can drive a remote control car, as far as they are concerned robots with sensors and such come from "MIT or one of those places". And while they may be impressed with our (admitedly programmable) remote control cars which we call robots, they know in the back of their head that "hey, that is cool, but that aint no robot. I seen robots. R2D2 was a robot. That thing there is an overgrown remote control car". And while they are in some ways wrong on that, overall they have a good point.