Re: an unusual observation
 

Risk! With real bombs - small, but real.

Re: an unusual observation
 

We could have water bombs!

Water Game+Board Game...
Now all we need is a fire game!
I know!

on an allience we would have one fire fighter bot, one bomb droper, and one platform bot that would have to have bombs droped on it butalso do the platform thing that we did in 07, and then for your team to get points your bot has to not be on fire at the end but it and you would also get points for being on the platform but if the other allience drops bombs on the fire fighter bot they get major penaltys and vice versa

this will never happen but atleast it would make robotics less nerdy....
we mght get some outsider fans too....h

Re: an unusual observation
 

Why not go the safer route? Use the robots to play Magic the Gathering. (with giant cards, of course). Autonomous would be building cards into the deck.

Re: an unusual observation
 

Battleship. Sort of a water game. Sort of a board game. Actually that would probably suck as a spectator competition unless it was the Deluxe Talking Battleship.

Re: an unusual observation
 

At this rate we could just play marbles.

But no, I still like that stuff involving tones and intervals. I suppose we could have something where the robots move around the area, find the data ports in the walls (each which has a few kilobytes of memory to store a waveform), and try to assemble a wave sequence to unlock some sort of code. Or they could be given sheet music which they must read and play (and then post in the .abc format. bonus points for making up lyrics to go along with it)

This is only the 80th post, and it's already way past feasible. What was I saying about making FIRST actually consider the ideas in this thread? This stuff might be usable in ten years or so.

How about really fun and funky stuff, like ferrofluid, non-newtonian fluid, or jello?

(and now for my 4th edit)
What about different sized balls, so each makes a "boing" of a different pitch? Some could even be filled with different liquids or gasses (helium in one, nitrogen in another, argon or xenon in a third)

Re: an unusual observation
 

Not the JELLO GAME again! (Dave's other favorite game, second only to water, Mars, or Krispy Kremes...)

Re: an unusual observation
 

The only reason I mentioned jello is because I had an awesome idea a while back of embedding iron shavings in jello. Now that I know of ferrofluid, it's a little moot, but still fun.
How about a textured jelly? Something along the lines of clay or play-do for robots.
Another option is to have (almost) fully elastic balls, that increase in "hardness" as they near the core. This would create a nice splat-bounce effect. (if you put a skin on it, you could do it with cubes too)

Re: an unusual observation
 

The Office quote:

Re: an unusual observation
 

Honestly, what worries me most is that they'll choose a gamepiece that will obstruct the cameras. Anything else is just in good fun.

Re: an unusual observation
 

Idk...I think FIRST is going to try something simple yet difficult because of the new controller and hard economic times; after all they have got to watch their costs too!

Re: an unusual observation
 

Well, the traffic barrels certainly would be fun if they shut off the lights for part of the competition. To reduce worry about all the switching of lights on the lifetime of the bulbs, they could use LEDs (I reccommend the L2K2-MWC4-11-0200 (that's the brightest cool-white luxeon K2 star that they offer), but the neutral-white or warm-white LEDs might be easier on the eyes.
I tested the efficiency of one of the cool-whites as my science project in 9th grade, and found them to be slightly more efficient than the fluorescent I tested (and in this case, much brighter as well).

Re: an unusual observation
 

And then my white sliver deck starts confusing the refs. because of all the chain abilities! :D

Re: an unusual observation
 

...and what would happen to my Artifact deck? I think the judges would have to ban the Affinity mechanic!

Re: an unusual observation
 

I was intending it to be one of those competitions where you don't bring your own cards; you're given a deck to play with (and I believe you get to keep that deck afterwards).
At any rate, it'd make it harder to keep it involved with the community. However, they might focus a little more on the West Coast (say, hold Nationals in Washington State).

Re: an unusual observation
 

This is probably a lame thought but maybe it will be somehow related to a recent movie. Like Ironman or something.