Participation requirements for off-season events

[seanwitte]

Originally Posted by Ken Leung

An interesting question to ask, if the person who asked the original question didn't hint at already, is what's stopping all these other high school students, adults, engineers, hobby groups to watch the game during kickoff, spend about 1000-1500 for an IFI controller, spend 6 months designing a robot (at their own pace), look up one of the off-season events, and pay a few hundred dollars to play the game?

All they have to do is follow the robot and game rules, which might not even apply for some off-seasons, and save all the money spent on registration fee and kit of parts.

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me! If there are several off-season in the region, they might even make it to a few events.

As Sean Lavery hinted in his post, I used to work with the programming and controls members on team 116. I got involved because my brother (12 years younger) was a member while in High School. I live about 30 minutes away from where they meet and I now have two young kids, so I haven't participated in several years. When the kids are older it would be fun to get a group of friends and their kids together and form a team. FIRST will always be the premier league for High School students, but maybe someday there will be a generic "National Robotics League" modeled after FIRST that anyone can participate in. Vex is probably more accessible, but theres just something about a big honkin' robot that's irresistible.