Why must BattleBots be considered bad?
IMHO, and yes I realize that this is not concurrent with Dean's feelings, but robots battling is not violence. Destruction? Yes, but not violence. Woodie Flowers spoke out against war reenactments at Nationals last year. Once again, I do not consider it violence. Robots are not people. Is it silly to build a robot only to have it destroyed during a competition? Last year I would have said yes, but more and more I think that its no less silly than devoting 6 weeks of your life to a robot to only have it compete in three or so competitions. FIRSTers love to talk about how much learning they get from their projects and I could not agree more. But the common consensious seems to be that FIRSTers seems to think that they learn more than Battlebot fighters. Its like comparing passenger jets to fighter jets. Both are complex in their own ways.
In all though, FIRST robots do seem to be much more complex final products (I cannot say better since it really is apples and oranges). I cannot praise FIRST enough for the lessons that it has taught me, and the fact that it has guided me to seek a career in engineering. But to see FIRST as the one of only to me just seems foolish.
~Tom Fairchild~, who is extremely glad that the "violent" sport of football is on TV instead of the Polo.
P.S. forgive any mispellings that I might have made in there! And please remember, this is all IMHO!
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