So a few new teams have come forward as newly-confirmed, such as Boltergiest and Tracer. A few observations and speculations:

These new competitors have less time to build and test than teams confirmed way back in March/April.

Confirming new teams suggests they're filling spaces left empty by others. So have other teams quietly dropped out? If they're filling the places of international teams, this suggests that BattleBots don't intend to wait for travel restrictions to be lifted.

What happens if BattleBots leave filming too late and travel restrictions are lifted? BattleBots presumably has only a limited number of places in mind. I would expect that previously-accepted teams are still accepted since they've invested in and built their machines. So do BattleBots get stuck with more entrants than intended?

BattleBots may be trying to accept new competitors to a nice round number for the competition. Otherwise there might be a bit of weirdness with some teams getting one fewer or one extra qualifying fight than others.

We will see bots which wouldn't normally be accepted. This might mean lower quality builds, less exciting designs or designs similar to existing bots (I wouldn't mind the latter). It might also mean more experimental designs and fun surprises (remember also that Yeti and Sharko were reserves and Duck was almost rejected).