[Robert Cawthon]

Originally Posted by synth3tk

Although some teams can only afford to do that short FRC season.

I'm going to try and push our team to do more events (outreach, etc), preferably things that don't cost much until we raise more money.

One of the things our team does is go to some of the children's venues (in our area it is the children's museum) and set up a demonstration of our bots. We even let the kids drive them with a person (one with very quick reactions) holding a hand over the kill switch. We also have one of the students coaching the young driver. The kids love it and it may peak their interest for technology. Most of the time we do this during school holidays when one or more of the adults can get off of work, or during the summer. It doesn't cost much other than time and it is a great gift to the kids. We also have attended street fairs doing the same thing. It is a good idea to give a couple of people some protection for their shins (some folded cardboard and duck tape will help) and have them close to the robot just in case while the younger kids are driving. We found the 2007 robot works great since we have the rings and set up a simple piece of PVC pipe stuck into a small piece of plywood for a target to drop the rings on. Simple horse shoe game for the bot.