Dean Kamen on the interesting way they score the FIRST robotics competition – “We work really hard to ‘ambivalence-scale’ our competition, as we call it. We create a competition where there’s a lot of luck added to it. The rounds are only 2 minutes long; the scoring system isn’t particularly fair. It favors, throughout each round, the underdog…We did everything we could to make it fun enough that if your robot didn’t win, it’s not a personal thing. ”