I'd like to offer a friendly challenge to everyone. Let's come up with 10 obstacle ideas that when overcome, would be applicable to solving societal problems. Hopefully one day, FIRST spectators will be saying things like, "Wow, the fire department ought to implement a robot like that!" Here are a couple of examples that are fairly obvious with one being right up Dean's alley.
Obstacle: Two flights of stairs with a landing in between (2 steps, a landing, then 2 more steps would be sufficient).
Application for society: As Dean has demonstrated, this would be helpful for physically challenged folks. A very fast stair climbing robot could save lives in a fire.
Obstacle: A door with a standard door knob that is cut off just above the door knob (cutting the door short is to make it a little more spectator friendly).
Application: A robot that could manipulate standard door knobs quickly could be helpful to the physically challenged, fire departments, and bomb squads.
Even if a solution already exists (stair climbing robot for example), it would be interesting to see if the FIRST teams could advance some ideas.
Hopefully, I have helped push this thread toward page 10 so we can reduce Dave's sleep time from 2 hours a night to 1 hour a night. Dave, when your mother said, "Dave, you need your eight hours of sleep," she meant 8 hours a night ... not a week!
Please consider yourself challenged,
Lucien