I was wondering how many of you would be interested in a professional robotics league? Something with organized teams attached to a city(ie: LA Lakers). A professional robotic sport that we could all follow that doesn’t change from year to year, but played with FRC style robots and controlled by humans.
I’m guessing most people (on CD anyway) would love to have a professional league…how practical however might be a more interesting discussion.
- I WOULD like a pro robotics league
- I WOULDN’T like a pro robotics league
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Thanks for putting up the poll! Great idea!!!
All I can think about are the commentators…
Some unlucky folks may remember these two from Megabots vs Suidobashi
Seriously though, how would you make this entertaining to watch?
FRC is fun if your involved. On off weeks, I watch the match streams, but it’s more in the background unless a particular team comes up.
Battle bots is cool, but even that feels tired.
Pretty much any remote controlled event seems fun to watch once or twice for the novelty then you change the channel. Remote cars, planes, drones, bots. I’ve seen all of these and have quickly gotten bored of all of them.
?
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The Robomaster tournament has smaller robots (closer to FTC size). It’s entertaining to watch for a while and closest I have seen to being more like what is being asked for. To grow to a size of professional sports or even e-sports there’s a long way to go.
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I think a great way to make it more interesting is having one team enter multiple robots. If it were similar to FRC, all three alliance members are from one team. I believe this is how DJI RoboMasters works (I’m not too familiar with the competition). Each robot is specialized for a certain task and they all work together. Imagine this year one robot sits at the loading station that shoots to ball into a hopper of another bot that then shoots it into the goal. All robots on one alliance could be built to lock together and climb. I think the engineering challenge and driver skills (defending or avoiding defense) are the entertaining part, much like F1.
EDIT: Looks like I was sniped on RoboMasters.
EDIT 2: I also think that game design is very important to keeping things entertaining. And I do think that the game should remain pretty consistent across season, but incorporate rule changes that bring about new design challenges.
Make that about go-kart size with live ammunition then you can count me in!
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I’d say any exciting robotics match should have a simple concept with limited in-focus actions to keep track of (easy to follow), be on the larger size physically, and be fast. I’d say larger and faster than FRC even. Game is ideally Aerial Assist or similar to it. Huge cash prize and baller trophy.
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If Aerial Assault were a thing, we would have pee wee leagues, HS, college (maybe), and pro, and it would be bada$$.
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Isn’t this what Battlebots is trying to be? I mean, they have robots that are human-controlled, about FRC sized (though the weight limits are much higher, with the typical battle bot being around double the weight of an FRC bot) and the game doesn’t change from year to year. Of course, the game is pretty simple (“smash the other robot”) and pretty destructive (again, “smash the other robot”) but it seems to have a lot of appeal (probably also due to “smash the other robot”.) Not that a well-designed FRC type game couldn’t become such a sport without being so destructive. But it seems to me that we already have a contender for what you’re talking about.
BTW, the sci-fi author John Scalzi had a novel out a couple of years ago called Head On. In it, people compete in a game called Hilketa that’s a combination of various ball games and gladiatorial combat using robotic bodies. It’s a bit more than that, since the competitors are all people who have lost the use of their physical bodies and use remotely piloted robots (called threeps, for their superficial resemblance to C3PO) to navigate the world. Of course, controlling a threep requires very sophisticated programming and a neural net implanted in your brain, so it’s a bit more commitment that FRC (but only a bit.)
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While BattleBots is certainly thrilling, I simply don’t see it as a very scaleable league sport in its current form. This is primarily due to the simple game (“smash the other robot”) and the audience (TV viewers who, on average, are probably less robot-crazy that this forum’s demographic). It’s only a matter of time before the show starts getting very repetitive, if we aren’t already to that point. As a result, if you read the official “How to get on BattleBots” document, you’ll see that the producers highly prize unique and flashy bots, even over effective ones (exception: tombstone). There are only so many possible archetypes and the room for functional (and even aesthetic) creativity is lacking.
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We already have a sport like this, it’s called auto racing.
The appeal of (non-combat) robotics is that the goals are always in flux. Common objectives and meta? Sure. But always something new to do. You’re usually in the exciting innovative part of the 80/20 rule rather than the squeeze-every-last-drop-out part.
I’d argue that if you let things get bigger and de-themed them (think 2011-2014… and think about how typical sports don’t have “themes”), polish, and eliminate gimmicks, drastically changing goals would be easy to follow. Also, projectile-only games, no pick-and-place.
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Yes!!!
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When and if this nightmare ends and we aren’t all trapped by covid, ignorance and the death of the American Experiment, I am seriously feeling spiritually impelled to start an AA league. Hopefully I won’t be Don Quixote. Hopefully this is your dream too.
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If Formula 1 had stuck with the rules it had in 1990 the cars would have been mostly robots before the turn of the millennium.
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If you end up being Don Quixote then who is the horse?
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Rocinante? The ordinary horse made great. You must know that it takes a magnificent steed to stand against giants.
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!
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Sorry, but I’m just not buying what you’re selling here.
“Smash the other robot” is too repetitive to be a sport? Boxing and MMA are both sports with significant interest. Professional wrestling blends sports and entertainment. Heck, any sport with a fixed ruleset is bound to be “repetitive.” The drama and excitement comes from each individual match.
Combat robotics aren’t scalable? BotRank has over 50,000 recorded match results for combat robotics, with plenty more missing. There are numerous weight classes, ranging from fairyweight (150g) all the way up to superheavyweight (340lb). The 3lb Beetleweight division is actually the most popular, for its blend of affordability, kit-based options, and excitement. Battlebots, itself, fielded up to around 100 heavyweights alone during the 2002 season, with only select matches appearing on TV.
The room for functional and aesthetic creativity is lacking? What? Just look at HUGE, Wrecks, Beta, Mechadon, Tentomushi, Mammoth, Obwalden Overlord, Warhead, Overkill, and Tazbot. And those are just robots that competed in Battlebots itself, rather than other TV shows or unaired competitions. I get that you’re likely complaining about the dominance of low-profile vertical spinners in the current Battlebots meta, but there will be a dominant archetype in any competition environment. And that archetype can change for any number of reasons. Biohazard was considered to be the Greatest of All Time for a long period, until advances in spinner power (first via shuffler/walker rules) eventually dethroned it, with its match-ups against Brutality and Megabyte at Robogames 2005 sending it into retirement. Differing scoring criteria lead to wildly different results between Robogames/Combot Cup and Battlebots, despite a similar field of competitors. Original Sin is one of the best ever in Robogames, but its Battlebots counterpart (Free Shipping) is basically an also-ran. Even after a championship season, Biteforce went for a total redesign to better suit updates to the Battlebots judging criteria. Updates to the Battlebots design rules also play a role, with the oft polarizing Chomp being redesigned as a walker. Different arena hazards and fight formats in RobotWars leads to an entirely different meta, with higher value on enclosed wheels and control flippers like Apollo being top contenders. Different weight classes also lead to different design opportunities, with designs that are sometimes considered novelties at higher weight classes being highly competitive. And that’s not even factoring in classes like sportsman, that restrict weapon types.
If there’s a type of robotic sport that has the mass appeal to succeed as a professional league, it’s without a doubt combat robotics. Nothing else even comes close.
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Fair enough. Maybe I’m bringing my strong personal disinterest in sports too far into the mix.
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I think this is true right now because it’s the only robotics sport that really exists at any large scale.
I get what Aidan is saying. I stopped watching Battlebots as I found it getting repetitive and nothing for me was compelling about it anymore. As someone who definitely has above average interest in robot related stuff, I think that says something.
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