Hot Bot-on-Bot Action

My oldest son is in High School this year and jumped at the opportunity to go after Dean Kamen’s FIRST Robotics competition this fall. Steve Jobs gets all the press but Dean Kamen is the guy that is really making differences in the world of tech, revolutionizing medical and health devices in particular but doing a tremendous amount of work in a broad array of subjects. Briefcase sized dialysis machines, wheelchairs that climb stairs, nation-scale water purification systems, the works. One of his more recent efforts is a device designed to launch SWAT teams onto the roofs of buildings (yes, from the ground) utilizing compressed air. This isn’t some socially inept guy that’s working out of his basement with crazy hair, this is a guy that runs his own company of elite engineers with crazy hair. FIRST Robotics is his invention as well, with challenges issued annually to high school students to create autonomous and remote controlled robots to carry out specific tasks, in competition with each other.  Mr. Kamen is no fool, he knows where his new employees are going to come from.