A Water Competition Next Year?!?!?!

[Mark Hamilton]

I've said this before, but I don't think water would be as large a technical hurdle as many people think. It would require a ruggedized controller, preferably with relays and speed controllers integrated, which was sealed water tight. Every wire coming in and out would then have it's own fuse to prevent a short taking out the controller. For safety reasons this would have to be FIRST provided. It's worth pointing out that water actually has fairly high resistance, and electricty always follows the path of least resistance ( should be the wires. The competition would definitly be a challenge, but if we were given a kit geared towards an aquatic game, it would be possible. I'm sure the logistical problems of actually running the competition, not to mention aquatic bots would cost a lot more money to build would make it an impossibility in the near future. There already are aquatic robot competitions, especially at the college level, and many are built with fewer resources then many teams have, but they are executed at a much smaller scale.