If this has already been discussed, I apologize; it's a long topic, and I could have very well overlooked concepts or posts while I was reading it.
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Originally Posted by Matt Attallah
I think Battlebots will become big when robot technology can be reached to everyone, including in low-income homes. Look at wrestling, that is a huge violent sport, and look how big it has become. When RC controllers, micro-chips&processors, etc... come down, i do think eveyone will be out for robots like battle bots. Hey, it's in human nature, when, for the most part, BIG things happen, they usually are violent, and everyone wants to know what happened...
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It's worth pointing out - again - that the VEX kits will probably hit that level of affordability far before the BBIQ equivalent. Unless their marketing strategy is like Apple's, where a product is announced days or weeks before ship instead of months in advance, the VEX kits will definitely beat them to the market.
I probably shouldn't be voicing an opinion on BBIQ; I know next to nothing about the program. In this thread, however, people have mentioned that BBIQ doesn't require a new robot every year. I can see that leading to teams either using one design year after year or using one robot and patching it up as needed. The level of learning involved there pales in comparison to what FIRST demands every year.
I know that that's not how every team would operate, and that Woodie's quote about education being as much or as little as you want is spot on. Still, I think that BBIQ might achieve its goals more readily if they could find a way to ensure that the students are getting some kind of learning experience out of it, something beyond how to repair or rebuild.