Battle Bots ?

[artdutra04]

I've never understood the "holier than thou" attitude most FIRSTers have towards Battle Bots.

That being said, look up NERC. (My roommate and friends built Professor Chaos at WPI several years ago, and are pretty active in combat robotics in the Northeast).

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

I've never understood the "holier than thou" attitude most FIRSTers have towards Battle Bots.

That being said, look up NERC. (My roommate and friends built Professor Chaos at WPI several years ago, and are pretty active in combat robotics in the Northeast).

Agreed, I've designed a we combat robots and then lessons learned there are entirely different than from FIRST. I really can't see how learning and improving design skills are a bad thing.

Most combat robot teams operate on less of a budget than a FIRST team, know they are likely to get damaged, are prepared for the fact, and almost always repair and rebuild (often before the next fight!).

[Tom Ore]

[quote=artdutra04;969145]I've never understood the "holier than thou" attitude most FIRSTers have towards Battle Bots.
[quote]

It reminds me of sail boats and motor boats. To a hard core sail boat enthusiast, a motor boat is a "stink boat". To a hard core motor boat enthusiast, a sail boat is an "uncontrollable hazard". The two groups seem to dislike each other. I don't know why...

I have no problem with battle bots - it's just not what we do here. (Having said that, however, I doubt a battle bot competition can be as exciting as an FRC competition - I've never been to one though.)

[Roger]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

I've never understood the "holier than thou" attitude most FIRSTers have towards Battle Bots.

It's not a "holier than thou" attitude -- for me at least. When we're supermarket fundraising and the battlebot question comes up, I've got to quickly come up with an answer that grabs them. (Heh -- holier than thou ) Depending who it is, my additional answer is "-- but it is for high school students, after all", usually given to worried parents; with an added apologetic shrug to battlebotians. (That is a word, isn't it?) Then we can get into a discussion of FRC, with maybe a donation or, even better, a local machinist/programmer/adult that wants to help us build robots.

I've seen the "battlebots" shows from way back. The (I'm guessing) original UK version was quite enjoyable, when it was versus the house robots. How do you defeat a battle ready well-practiced house robot? But it evolved into a destruction competition rather than a defeat competition, and (even before FIRST was around) I didn't like watching a 4-12 month robot project get destroyed in the first round. It's just a different kind of game.

Looking at the two websites mentioned above, there doesn't seem to be many local events - unless you count NERC's Philly as local, next fall. They looked like they just had one.