I can see a few niches for this. (I'll focus on the aerial robotics challenge, because it's the most interesting....)
Not every university student wants the same things out of the experience, and, buried in the depths of their schoolwork, more than a few engineering students need a little reminder of why engineering can be fun. I, for one enjoyed the big challenges (I led Waterloo's team in the
2008 International Aerial Robotics Competition), but many of my counterparts didn't have the time or inclination to do things on that scale, and instead undertook smaller extracurricular engineering projects as an outlet for their creative energies. That's one niche. (Granted, a lot of engineering students looking for a part-time challenge just find an FRC team to mentor, and get the same thing out of it; to each their own, I guess.)
In the proposed form, I can foresee a lot of entrants taking the off-the-shelf route, and building something that is both cheap and fun. However, if some of the more expert
IARC teams show up with their
5th- or
6th-mission robots, the dilettantes are going to be savagely beaten (in FIRST flight for sure). That's one of the problems with aerial robotics at this level: it's easy to get a team started, but really quite hard to do it well. (For reference, the IARC robots are capable of autonomous flight within confined spaces, and do it with a 1.5 kg mass limit, and off-board processing...which is well within the proposed FIRST rules, given that there's no significant limit on what the control system is composed of.) So that's the other niche: an opportunity for experts to show off their skills.
Incidentally, have any committed competitors been identified for this pilot challenge?
The games look like they could be a lot of fun, and represent a fresh interpretation on the FIRST format. If FIRST is indeed willing to sanction this tournament, I think you've got a worthwhile game (or series of games).
Now, as for the competition as proposed here, I have many reservations about the rules. (This isn't just idle criticism: I think it's fair to say that I've got a lot of experience in stuff like this, and I've seen the good and bad aspects of FIRST's various programs, as well as VRC and IARC.)
Foremost is the question of safety. I hate to put this foremost, because I don't mean to suck the fun out of this by neutering the robots, but there does need to be some more concrete consideration of the implications of the relatively open-ended design constraints.
There are no limits on the amount of energy stored onboard, no limits on robot or mechanism mass and no limits on the amount of kinetic energy in a mechanism. Is the proposed netting really an adequate defence against a damaged Ø20 in carbon fibre propeller failing at 6 000 rev/min, especially if it's driven by a 1 250 W electric motor on a 40 V, 16 A·h lithium polymer battery pack?*
Hell no!
This isn't FRC which is predicated on the concept that power is strictly limited by the available batteries, circuit breakers and motors. And while the configuration I described would consume most of the budget, that's not to say it's implausible that a team would build some sort of ducted fan flying machine using those sorts of parts.
Even an off-the shelf indoor aerobatic R/C aircraft could conceivably be flown by hand through the obstacles in the FIRST Flight playing field. I certainly wouldn't want to be standing too close to an electric F3A aircraft
doing its thing, especially if there's a risk of collision, or if the pilot isn't very good.
Sure, you could fall back on the FRC-style safety clause, but that means nothing to someone who wasn't in FRC, and there's not even any reason to believe that precedents from FRC mean anything here. The friendly request to be safe is reasonable, but ultimately, it makes the requirements unclear because teams won't know where to draw the line—should they introduce slightly more risk to be more competitive? And even assuming that the safety precautions will protect everyone (i.e. assume the inspectors will be able to identify what is and is not appropriately safe), how are teams to know what the inspectors will rule at the event? This is an important design constraint that needs to be made clear.
As for other issues with the rules, let me summarize by saying that they include a number of the ambiguities of the FRC rules. That's not a good thing. Regarding robot design, although the IARC rules are far from perfect, there are some worthwhile lessons to be learned from them. If you'd like, I can certainly give you an FRC inspector's perspective on what works and what doesn't, with respect to the simplifications you've made.
Also, from a gameplay point of view, the proposed rules overlook a number of scenarios that could easily come up during a match, some involving behaviour that might be considered shady, but which is not prohibited (FRC has had issues with this in the past—flipping of robots in the late 1990s, for example). Additionally, I think the scoring conditions for FIRST Flight need to be rephrased for precision, and the requirement for human interpretation of the robots' actions is a bit troublesome.
Finally, do you have the game design and engineering staff in place to ensure that the pilot teams will have well-defined objectives and a well-tested game, well in advance of the competition? The teams certainly will need to know what's expected of them prior to the competition, so that they can do justice to their own logistics, design, construction and testing processes.
*I only bring that particular configuration up as an example because of my direct familiarity with it: we used two of those on the Waterloo IARC entry, which was a 100 lb fixed-wing aircraft. The only way we dared operate that indoors was with the aircraft tied down in the fluid mechanics laboratory, and nothing of value in the propeller arcs.