Hi Eric,
Thanks for your great post. It is very nice to see the vendor taking an interest in their products.
The FIRST Robotics Competition is perhaps unfamiliar to you; I strongly recommend you take a quick look at
www.usfirst.org to get an idea about what this is all about. To save a little time, I'll just mention that it's tens of thousands of High School kids making 120 lb non-destructive robots. The "Game" for each year isn't announced until the first day of the season, which for 2008 is January 5th, and at the same time receive a Kit Of Parts, which is just semi-random parts,
not a robot kit. The teams (well over a thousand, international) then have exactly 6 weeks to design, build & ship their robots, an extraordinarily short time.
So, the Rules will not become available until January 5th.
In the meantime, some of the students here may be interested in pinging you on their proposed applications.
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To the FIRST community: OK, here you have a real, live BSEE from UNH who has the job of advising you on how to use his company's products. This is a LOT like how it happens out in the real world. You see, if the company helps you understand how their product will improve YOUR product (a robot, perhaps?) then they will probably be able to sell something to you. So, they hire "Application Engineers" just for that purpose.
Have at it, folks.
Don