Questions you've been asked about robotics

[NorviewsVeteran]

I've gotten, "so does it come in a kit?" a few times.

[Chris is me]

The questions I get asked at 90% of demos.... (read the following in a sarcastic tone for the full effect)

"IS IT BATTLEBOTS???? DO THE ROBOTS FIGHT EACH OTHER??? AWW THIS IS STUPID. YOU SHOULD PUT A CHAINSAW ON IT LOLOLOLOLOOLOLOL"

Otherwise it's usually intelligent questions about the competition, what skills I learn, why I do it, etc.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Molten

Interesting, my answer is yes. It is a lot like BattleBots, just with a different goal. This generally leads to, "what's the goal?" and a bit more interest. I mean, let's face it...Battlebots has done a service for FIRST in that it gets people to come and start a conversation. Even if that start is always, "Is it like BattleBots?". I'm just happy they asked a question.

My answer to that question is very similar to yours. "Well...kind of...but not really. It's kind of like BattleBots and sporting events mated and had a baby" It's like BattleBots in the sense that you actually build a robot. But, the motive of the game is more of a competitive tournament, kind of like you would see in football. The goal (of the game, not FIRST) is to win, or at least do well in competition, so you can advance in rank and the best teams end up facing each other.

Questions I get A LOT:
"So you actually build robots?"
"Isnt' it hard?"
"How big are the robots?"
<insert obligatory BattleBots question here>
"Where do you do all of this?"
"How big is the team?"
"How many girls are on the team?"

Edit: Oh yeah, I also got asked the question "Can you build a robot that could kill people?" during an interview for journalism. The task was to interview a classmate and write a profile story about them. Naturally, I babbled on for the entire class period about robotic and how amazing it is (why would I talk about anything else?), and my interviewer asked me that as a joke. Somehow we got on the topic of killing the journalism teacher (which we would never do; he's too awesome), and I elaborated on alllll the ways we could build a robot to do that. He wrote a story based on that and got an A+ about it XD
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