>Once again, my friend, he STARTED the
>competition for students to make robots and
>battle them.
Clarification: Battlebots is a completely different entity from the FIRST competition that Dean founded. While Battlebots and FIRST have similar goals, as is mentioned in pcwhalen's post, their approaches are very different. In FIRST, rather than the goal being to destroy another team's machine, the goal is to design a machine that can outperform the competition, with the only damage caused by normal robot interaction.
Nate
I've been able to see the iBot in action(like Mike Leese and Merk00, I am involved with the FIRST competition that Dean founded,) and rather than look silly, you can't help but be amazed that the thing actually works...it actually pulls itself, while someone is sitting on it, up onto two of its six wheels, and is able to adjust itself to keep from falling over without any further actions by the rider. Dean rolled onto the stage in the iBot at the FIRST national competition awards ceremony last year, and seeing it navigate stairs and then balance at eye level with others on the stage was enough to kill any thoughts that I had of it looking "silly."
Nate
Slashdot Mirror
>Once again, my friend, he STARTED the >competition for students to make robots and >battle them. Clarification: Battlebots is a completely different entity from the FIRST competition that Dean founded. While Battlebots and FIRST have similar goals, as is mentioned in pcwhalen's post, their approaches are very different. In FIRST, rather than the goal being to destroy another team's machine, the goal is to design a machine that can outperform the competition, with the only damage caused by normal robot interaction. Nate
I've been able to see the iBot in action(like Mike Leese and Merk00, I am involved with the FIRST competition that Dean founded,) and rather than look silly, you can't help but be amazed that the thing actually works...it actually pulls itself, while someone is sitting on it, up onto two of its six wheels, and is able to adjust itself to keep from falling over without any further actions by the rider. Dean rolled onto the stage in the iBot at the FIRST national competition awards ceremony last year, and seeing it navigate stairs and then balance at eye level with others on the stage was enough to kill any thoughts that I had of it looking "silly." Nate