Re:When The Drones Come Marching In
by nickpinkston on Saturday January 29, 2011 @11:30AM
(#2155686)
I'm completely with you, and it could be a great way to get the public interested in (i.e. funding) technology. It reminds me of when auto racing actually led to improvements for street cars. I mean kids already love various robotic cartoons - who wouldn't love the same as a real-life game. Attendance could be a little dangerous though...
Let's hope UPenn's QuadRotor Lab is in the running. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM
Re:When The Drones Come Marching In
by stcredzero on Saturday January 29, 2011 @04:45PM
(#2156481)
A complete enclosed plexiglass arena plus some weight limits and munitions regulations should be enough to keep it safe.
Re:When The Drones Come Marching In
by nickpinkston on Sunday January 30, 2011 @09:28PM
(#2160023)
Yea - sounds right to me. Perhaps even kill targets on the vehicles to limit? I'd think we'd get to unkillable bots pretty quickly with aerial ones - maybe I'm wrong though. Reminds me of the spinning blade bots that seemed indestructible...
Re:When The Drones Come Marching In
by stcredzero on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @01:37PM
(#2166636)
Only the well engineered spinning blade bots (like Ziggo) were nigh indestructible.
I think a lot of this could be addressed by adding ground targets to go after or protect. I can also imagine lots of munitions which would be hard to just shrug off or dodge, like nylon nets or lasers hitting photocells rigged as cutoff-switches.
By scaling down to tri and quad-rotors, one simultaneously gets the excitement of flight (and crashes) with the potential for more visually interesting weaponry.