Next Years Game

[Mike Soukup]

Originally posted by Tom Fairchild
My personal guess is driving each others robots. Yes, that'd get a lot of people mad, but that's the point. User-friendliness.

I think a game like that would be a disaster. It would be very difficult to introduce someone to the controls of your robot in just a few minutes. Even though I was familiar with our robot this year, I didn't get to drive it a lot until we were getting ready for IRI. It took a good hour or so until I could perform all the basic tasks without messing up. Even then I wasn't nearly as good as our drivers.

You say that user friendliness is the key, but even that isn't good enough, it takes a familiarity with the controls and a good feel for the machine. A good example is a car. They're very user friendly, but different cars have different feels. When I drive my brothers car, it takes a few minutes to get used to the stiffness of the gas pedal, and to get a good feel for the clutch and shifter. Even then I can't really push the car to its limits (not that I would ) because I'm used to the handling of my car, not his.

To relate this back to the robots, it means that we would get inexperienced drivers making all sorts of mistakes. That is not a good for the spectators. It would be like making Tiger Woods use my golf clubs. Sure he'd do better than I can with them, but not as well as with his own clubs. It's more exciting to watch someone perform with the club/robot they're familiar with.

Mike