Is riveting that much better?

[Peter Matteson]

177 has been known to buck solid rivets in our robots. We have the full aircraft builder's set up in our shop with pnuematic hammer, a variety of bucking bars, and plenty of kleckos.

Former mentors on our team built their own aircraft and taught us how to dimpel the sheet metal and everything. We usually only use this in applications were we need higher shear strength or the rivet needs to be counter sunk, or we make a monocoque structure out of sheetmetal

I believe 1501 Thrust uses some solid rivets in their robots as well because they build their robots almost exclusively in a monocoque aircraft fashion.