Robot competition business idea

[Swampdude]

I had this idea a year or 2 ago and thought it could be a big hit if done right. Since I never got serious with it I thought I should throw it out there and see if anybody liked it or could do something with it.
Since various robot competitions are getting to be a big deal. What if you made a website that had online webcam competitions. Basically take a game like this years and set up a web gui interface to gain control over these "Real" bots. You have however many bots to choose from. People pay for however much time to drive these things to compete over the web. So you build a field, probably in a spare bedroom (something fairly small - since you have the advantage of scale). Then build these bots and mount cameras on them to feedback to the drivers interface. Also have an omni view of the playing field fed back over a split screen. The field would need to be managed by a person to reset, repair, score etc. requiring availability to be only certain hours of the day. Probably a good college experiment. Obviously there's a problem with the FPS and drivability of something like that but these days bandwidth is only getting better.
You might think people wouldn't pay for that, but you'd be surprised what people will pay for, especially nowadays over the internet. Plus the competition side of it will get addictive. Having running stats on users etc. This could probably be done with Lego's! Whadya think? Am I crazy or would you pay to compete with real bots online? Maybe just once just to try it out if it was cheap?

[thoughtful]

I might say its a good idea, if done right it can get people paying, not a lot but i think it would cover the cost of the setup within 2 months. It would be great to see someone pull this off.

[Adam Y.]

You might think people wouldn't pay for that, but you'd be surprised what people will pay for, especially nowadays over the internet. Plus the competition side of it will get addictive. Having running stats on users etc. This could probably be done with Lego's! Whadya think? Am I crazy or would you pay to compete with real bots online? Maybe just once just to try it out if it was cheap?

I had the same idea but I basically want the robots to act as virtual tour guides as opposed to having them run a competition. I myself probably wouldn't pay for it but hey it would be a nice idea.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I think you have a really good idea, but can I recommend a different way to use it?

I think it would be an excellent program for teaching your team how the game works. Why sit there and talk strategy, when you can get up and demonstrate it? Team members could use the internet to record a match of their choosing, or a strategy, and then play it back as a digital file during a presentation.

Drivers or potential drivers could also view it for match replays and practice situations that may occur, or practice scoring penalties. This way, you wouldn't have to manage a network for groups of people that may be out of your security bounds.

I wish you the best of luck,
Genia

[M. Hicken]

good idea, but unless the goal is to destroy eachother, i doubt it would fly, people today are overly distructive, hense, battlebots. Even if the goal was something like the FIRST games, people, who have spent no time working on the robot will not drive cautiously enough and damage will occur. The repairs to the bots may be greater than that of those paying.


just my $.02

[Zach Purser]

I've been trying to think of a business way to make money for FIRST for a few years now. I hate asking people for money, it's just not my nature, so if there is a way for the team to earn money I'd love to give it a shot.

One idea I've talked about with some people is a sumo-bot style competition, where the object is to push and shove your opponent out of the ring. It would only take a couple robots to get the competition started, and maybe this idea could be incorporated with letting people control the robots over the internet. Since there is always a lot of pushing and shoving in a FIRST match it would serve as a good testbed for developing drive systems.

Any thoughts?

[Conor Ryan]

I'm the same way too, i hate asking for money. I like your idea for the sumo competition, you can probably also add a game based on a years rules.

Heres one that could work for this year, have a head to head to head competition, one robot on each side of the tetra, and set up an automatic loading station, say 10 feet away from a tetra, and the pretty much see who could stack the most points in a set amount of time. It would be a real competition to see who could stack the most the fastest, but as well stack the highest. Also have a few bonus points for the last tetra capped. And you need a rule that says the robots can't touch each other, except over 7 feet. It would be a fun ultra fast paced competition that can make a crowd happy. This would probably also work as a mini game at a competition.