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Unread 15-04-2005, 14:41
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dhitchco dhitchco is offline
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AKA: Doug Hitchcock
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Re: New Ideas for next year's competition

Hi gang,
please bear with my reply, as I work for a military radio company, so this response may have a lop-sided response:

TriplePlay is my first exposure to the games of FIRST, but I have seen videos of prior years too. I really do like the concept of multi-team alliances and think that three is a good number, but not more than that. I believe the "heart" of the game is in the vision, manipulators, and strategy, not in the drive train.

Real-world robots that operate on a level floor and pick/push/grab something are pretty pervasive in the industrial world.

However, in the military environment, the terrain is not likew running a raobot on a level warehouse floor. So, I'd like to see more crawling and climbing robots. Tunnels where the driver can't see the robot (semi-autonomous tasks) would be way kewl! Ramps and climbing like "stack attack" are also great.

I'd like to see the robots go from "A" to "B" and then perform some "task" rather than just moving an object. As an example, the military now uses robots (ground vehicles) to defuse those roadside explosive devices.

Think about a robot that has to go through a tunnel and then stick it's "key" into a special hole to turn on a 10-point reward light.

The objectives of the games can be endless; but think about how robots in the real world have advanced so much in the past few years with feelers, vision systems, and better 3-dimensional climbing abilities.

Lastly, human players (as discussed in a different thread) are a MUST-HAVE in these competitions. It adds to the excitement, involvement and human players can truly be "random"; which adds to game complexity. After all, it's not the robot that is getting the penalties this year is it?
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Last edited by dhitchco : 15-04-2005 at 14:44.
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