Slashdot Mirror

I'm a volunteer for FIRST as well as a builder of fighting robots. Both require a high degree of technical knowledge, building skill, and planning.

Watching robots fight each other has just as much or more crowd appeal than FIRST events. Therefore, it should inspire youngsters to participate in engineering just as much as FIRST.

Battlebots IQ is a program for teens that involves fighting robots. It doesn't cost $5000 just to get started, unlike FIRST.

My last year of high school ended last May (and how often do I get to say that like it's a *good* thing?) and I'd certainly disagree with that last sentence. Maybe not to the extent of saying robotics == good, programming fair == bad, but I wouldn't dismiss robotics that quickly.

One of the most appealing things about robotics, I've discovered, is that at the end you have something physical to show. Yes, I know, you can run the program, you can show people that, it's wonderful, and I've felt that sense of accomplishment when you track down the last bug (okay, second last, there's always one more) and it finally works -- but my friends and siblings were always a lot more impressed with the things they could touch and look at and watch demolishing trashcans.

If you're looking for nationwide competitions to join in on, my school has had a great experience with Battlebots IQ -- which is probably what you'd probably guess from the name. One of the downsides to a competition this focused on ripping other robots to shreds was that the rest of the girls in my high school didn't share my geekiness & bloodthirstiness, leaving me the only female presence on the school team -- which is a sad thing for an event trying to promote the coolness of this stuff to everyone.

On a smaller scale, another thing my old high school had great luck with was Lego Mindstorms -- they taught a class using them and, IIRC, found them an easy intro for people with no prior experience as well as a good meld of physical and virtual. There's a limit to how much you can do with them, of course, but they could be a neat starting point.

The other downside to a robotics competition as opposed to programming might be cost. Materials for making bots would add up quickly, I'd think, especially if you had many competing teams, whereas hopefully some of the resources for programming would already be there and the rest would be less financially significant. I don't know how much money you're throwing around, but I imagine it'd be a lot easier to fund bits than bots.

And -- to get a little bit more on track -- what excites high schoolers? Personally, thinking back: much of what appealed to me in programming (and part of why I'm now studying EE/CS) was the problem-solving aspect, so I guess my other obvious comment would be to say to capitalize on that. I was always interested in seeing how a problem could be solved by brute force or by elegant code or by unconventional sideways thinking -- and why some methods worked better than others, and when you could get away with the messy way. ;) I liked being able to break down problems into bite-sized pieces, I liked all the logical thinking, I really liked writing something and realizing as it compiled and worked that wow, this was how they did it in real life!

... disclaimer: I graduated high school, I'm now attending a techie college, I may not be probably not all that indicative of the general population. :P

If you read the story more carefully, you'd know that BattleBots isn't the same thing as Battlebots IQ . BattleBots(a competition which existed before it was ever on tv, and is currently being filmed and aired on comedy central) is a totally separate competition from BBIQ, which is only for highschool and middleschool students and is held in Universal Studios in Orlando and has never been televised. Thus, there are no ratings for them to be focused on, and as for your suggestion that "LEARNING and GRACIOUS PROFESIONLISM" is absent from this program, what the hell do you know about it other than your ignorant assumptions based on comedy central's depiction of Battlebots, a different competition altogether? You might want to look at a two-page article in the new york times comparing BBIQ and FIRST. There's also a BBIQ curriculum you might want to take a look at.

If you read the story more carefully, you'd know that BattleBots isn't the same thing as Battlebots IQ . BattleBots(a competition which existed before it was ever on tv, and is currently being filmed and aired on comedy central) is a totally separate competition from BBIQ, which is only for highschool and middleschool students and is held in Universal Studios in Orlando and has never been televised. Thus, there are no ratings for them to be focused on, and as for your suggestion that "LEARNING and GRACIOUS PROFESIONLISM" is absent from this program, what the hell do you know about it other than your ignorant assumptions based on comedy central's depiction of Battlebots, a different competition altogether? You might want to look at a two-page article in the new york times comparing BBIQ and FIRST. There's also a BBIQ curriculum you might want to take a look at.

The rules for BattleBots specificly mention "polybots" (aka a modular robot). However, I can only remember seeing one robot a few seasons ago that used such a design, and it didn't do too well.

The rules for polybots go like this:

• You have to show the ability to put the robot back together (without getting in there and doing it with your hands)
• The robot is KOed when 50% or more of the peices are incapacitated.
• If you have different configurations, your robot must meet the weight requirement in all its possible configurations

I believe there is also a rule that only two people on your team are allowed to be by the arena for driving, which will limit the number of peices that can be manualy controled. (I'm not sure about that rule, though).

There are also practical considerations to when taking the third rule into account. Imagine bringing in your highly-modular robot and telling the judges that your bot has a total of 2^32 possible configurations, and it must be weighed in all of them. The best thing to do in this circumstance is to call up the judges before the tourny and ask them if the bot can just be weighed in the configuration you're about to send into the arena. Bots are reweighed before each fight anyways, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Anybody have ideas for a good polybot?