Jerf, You bring up good points. I think you are certainly correct that for it to be more than a novelty this time they will need to have different rule sets th

Jerf, You bring up good points. I think you are certainly correct that for it to be more than a novelty this time they will need to have different rule sets that create more interesting matchups. When I was reading the rules of this new version it was basically "No holds barred" it would be cool to see a robot that sprayed acid or could napalm a competitors "sledgebot". To your point about a lack of technological advancement, there may not have been a major tech breakthrough, but I think the buzz around Arduino and related projects certainly packed the tech in a way that opened up hardware hacking to a much wider audience. There is a tech workshop in Boston called Willoughby and Baltic that is teaching artists to program with Arduino. I think a rule change coupled with a more diverse group of participants could do a lot for this nascent "sport".