Battle Bots, not impressed

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Posted by Mike Sklar.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #21, ComBBAT , from Astronaut H.S. and Titusville H.S. and Brevard Community College and Boeing Company and NASA-KSC.

Posted on 9/1/2000 9:49 AM MST


In Reply to: Battle Bots, not impressed posted by Michael Martus on 8/24/2000 4:02 PM MST:



I do not understand some of you overly anal, detailed FIRST fans. So many engineers get so caught up in the minute details of everything.

You just don't get it! Personally I've watched a couple of times now and Battlebots is an absolute blast. My 13 year old son is absolutely jazzed by it and has not missed a minute of it. Battlebots and the wonderful work by Comedy Central to turn it into a series has achieved exactly what Dean Kamen, Woody Flowers and FIRST was create to do. Change our culture and make technical endeavors part of the mainstream culture.

And from a practical engineering technologist's viewpoint (I've been in the automation R&D business for over 15 years) you don't get it either. Those battlebot machines are 1000 times more practical and reliable then our FIRST systems. They are so much more compact and rigid. We could all learn a thing or two from them. And the radio servos they use are lot more reliable to build and require no development SW effort. True they cannot do sophisticated control systems or react to the environment but most of that technology is not needed for basic mobility. And most FIRST teams simply connect inputs to motors directly. Just a less reliable way of doing the same thing. don't get me wrong I think the system we have in FIRST provides a much better learning experience, but it's not more robust.

Imagine a major championship Battlebot like event with $1M going to the winning team, 3 month long pursuit of the championship and shown on primtime, Sunday afternoon network television. This is a start.

Everyone should wake up and smell the roses. And don't tell me for a minute there's a single FIRST fanatic out there that hasn't thought just for a minute what it would be like to compete in Battlebots.

And go Ramtech! They are friends of mine and wonderfully dedicated people who have done a lot for FIRST. If there's a need for more info from them on this site (I have not read all of the posts) let me know and I can contact them.