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Originally Posted by dlavery
There is a very simple answer to this problem: VEX.
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Dave beat me to it. You simply cannot beat Vex for public robot demonstrations. If built correctly, the robots are more or less indestructible. Our team recently had a public FIRST demo at our local mall, and we let little kids walking by drive my Space Elevator Vex bot. The elevator and arm were both protected by limit switches, so there wasn't really anything to break.
On the other hand, although driving a FIRST robot may be impressive, it can also be dangerous to bystanders if the robot gets out of control. Also, without a large space, a tetra scoring robot is kind of boring, no matter how cool your operator interface or robot looks. But with the Vex bots, you can get a mini-game going, where people can drive and compete themselves.
This is the key to good public relations for recruiting members to your team - direct interaction. Then they actually see that robotics isn't a boring just-for-geeks club.
(It worked really well for our team, as almost everyone who was at the first meeting is now still involved with the team.
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