You seem to be grossly downplaying the engineering (mechanical, electrical, and software) required to get even a simple walking robot capable of competing in this competition. They want people to focus on building reliably working robots not on gimmicks to win a competition that has no prize.
For the challenge? It would be suicide for the event to fragment the already shallow depth of competitors at this point.
You seem to be grossly downplaying the engineering (mechanical, electrical, and software) required to get even a simple walking robot capable of competing in this competition. They want people to focus on building reliably working robots not on gimmicks to win a competition that has no prize.