Upon first hearing of the show Battle Bots, I found the concept incredibly enticing. “Fighting robots” what could be better? But after actually watching an episode I found it to be rather disappointing, and have talked to many who agree. After seeing a PBS special on Artificial Intelligence and robotic research I believe I discovered why. It’s not really the robots fighting, it’s their pilots. While I was craving little angry electronic demons battling with all they had, I got "twenty-something" engineers playing with heavily armed home made remote controlled cars. (Which is actually rather entertaining to me now, I was just expecting something better.)
Part of the PBS special included footage of past robotic soccer games. With exception to the lack of violence, I found them to be far more entertaining because there was no human participation during the matches. As wanna be programer (I'm only in high school; give me time.) I would much rather see amazing feats of software design than hardware design.