The future of roboting

[terry]

Re: The future of roboting

jonno you made the right choice bud.....robots rule ! lol

ive just emailed channel5customerservices@five.tv
and asked them if they will be recording a new series of robot wars soon,
i have also sent the link to everyone in my email address book and asked
them to do the same and pass it on to their friends to, i am also on facebook
and will do the same thing there. i dont know if it is worth trying the bbc,
i cant find an e mail link for them.
maybe we can start robot wars sms jokes on mobiles ! that might be a silly idea
I will go to sleep tonight dreaming of robots as usual, and think how we can
let the uk know robot wars is still very much alive.

[craig_colliass]

Re: The future of roboting

I go out for the evening and all hell breaks loose!!

Jonno has again made some interesting points in his posts; the one that caught my attention is about interesting fights and interesting robots. All EO€™s trust us to bring along robots that are safe, reliable and entertaining for the public to watch.

I also absolutely agree with the comment made by Craig

€œIf u build a rambot with 2 5mph wheelchair motors then its going to be dull, build a rambot with 8 wheels and 8 motors and its going to be as dull its down to the fight,€
The actual fight may be boring.
So what I would say, (if you possibly can) try to make your robot regardless of size as interesting as possible, for the public to watch fight? If it is a rambot put some lights on it, funny ears, fur, anything to make it interesting. We have to balance the competition side with the entertainment of the paying public.
Again all EO€™s trust us to bring along robots that are safe, reliable and entertaining for the public to watch.

Please don€™t take offence at remarks made on this forum, passion for this sport has always been strong, and inventors as a rule never take criticism well. Also if anyone has concerns about posting their points of view I do understand how hard it is, but be brave and help secure the future of the robot scene in this country.

Thanks for everyone€™s comments on this thread I for one appreciate all your input.

Craig

[john]

Re: The future of roboting

jonno, i agree with everything you said! dont know how you have put up with everything over the years and i think you should have taken the job! but as u havent i hope the next few events are big and we carry on for a few more years atleast

i dont think people understand that without you we would have packed this in 5 years ago!

stick to heavys, middles r shocking for every reason whats been said in this thread! wheel chair motors? you just wouldnt, thats going back to like series 2 in robot wars, and back in the day when beast thrashed t bone - people will just start moaning again saying the same things about middles n then want to get on to lightweight or whatever it is!

where is andy kane, shame he doesnt get involved anymore but i dont blame him!

[dgr]

Re: The future of roboting

Jonno, I think, overall, most of us will be happy to support whatever changes you want to make as long as we have somewhere to fight. I think that would sum up most of our views on this topic.

I don't think we should be critising anyone just for using wheelchair motors though. I'm using them cos theyre pretty much my only option. I'm building my robot my way, I aint arsed about winning fights or anything, I just always wanted to build a heavy and this is the way I can. Everyone else should be able to build it their way, whether they wanna build an ant, feather, middle, heavy, walker, whatever.

[typhoon_driver]

Re: The future of roboting

An interesting discussion and now that I have some time off from rebuilding a US summer camp I think its time to waid in.

When I first got into roboteering back the robot wars era we went for the middleweights because it was a legitimate weight class with a decent number of competitors and was so for a few years. A great place to gain some experience before we built a heavyweight. Nowadays I don't see much point in directing a new person down the route of a middleweight.

We have two major weight classes both with pretty well established sets of technology and a relative sum of investment depending on how crazy you want to make your machine. Featherweights are a great gateway into the sport and heavyweights are a defined step up. Some people prefer to stay in one limit or another, everyone has their own reasons.

Personally I love the full combat featherweights but I realise the whole event has to be smaller with a smaller arena and smaller crowd because of the size of the machines. Thats a cold hard fact.

I will be returning to heavyweights once I have completed my degree and have a stable cash flow because I love building a large machine and I have several heavyweight suitable components sitting there that are doing nothing.

With regards to the future, I think that a new direction of offering people robotic combat or robotic entertainment instead of robot wars. Robot wars started the ball rolling and now its up to all of us to keep pushing it. Under the topic of robotic combat we could start going down alternate routes, the boxing robots are a great example of this. If we want to offer robotic entertainment then this opens up hundreds of routes of machines. Robogames in the US is the best example I can think of an event that covers near enough every robotic discipline.

Obviously doing this every event won't work but the UK champs could perhaps include other forms of robotics to bring more people along to the event. Then who knows, before long they may be throwing a combat robot in the arena

[craig_colliass]

Re: The future of roboting

€œBuzz word at the moment is use of social media (well in my industry it is - I sell ATMs / cash points)...viral campaigns - effectively mass marketing via web, email, twitter, face book and all the other forms ...all at no cost - Should we be doing more than just use of this forum and the odd post-event videos on You-tube? No expert but when I see IBM and Deloitte using the like of YouTube you have to ask yourself why - with their multi million $ marketing budgets do they use this form. So maybe some mileage there?€

I hate making suggestions I can have no practical input in, so sorry for this but I like Ian's idea and think it may be something others could do if they have any available time.
Basically it is a Robot Cyber Shop Window.
Showing a positive image of the movement. We have lots of hits on this forum every day.
To start with perhaps it could be as simple as having a thread starting on this forum that only excepts robot related clips, robot fights, robot tests or funny incidents (team Bud do good ones of them) I think you can put links to utube. This would be a free and positive thing to help raise the positive profile to the public. (Who enter the strange world of the robot forum.) after a time it may develop into a seperate site for the public to get a view of what the shows are like.
Also if so many people watch this space can€™t we sell advertising???

[banana_man]

Re: The future of roboting

Hi all,
Further to Ian's post about wrestling, why not hype up fights as grudges. If the audience think that the robots/roboteers really have something to fight about, they are more likely to get more involved. If the fight announcer could read out a fictitious back story, this would make the fights seem less like a sport, and more like a matter of life and death.
On the topic of sacrificial armour, I have a robot that is comfortably underweight, and I would be more than happy to velcro on some extra panels that would fall off on impact.

Just some ideas. I am not an EO, so I don't know if these things have already been tried or whether they would work.

[botmad]

Re: The future of roboting

I TOO AM LOOKING FORWARD TO RIAT .......


AS I MAY GET A CHANCE TO CHAT AND BE SOCIABLE TOO

( because i dont get chance to at show events too busy )

and it will be very nice to have a REAL GOOD DRINK with everyone

[ady]

Re: The future of roboting

some interesting points and ideas coming on, jonno i aint having a dig at you personally, perhaps i read your replies wrong (if so im sorry for that) i think the reason it gets so heated is because we all strongly care about the sport however many or few events personally attended, and whether our ideas are not what your looking for or tried its just our ideas, were all trying to help make events more interesting after your previously worrying threads regarding continuing with RR.
my biggest concern about all these ideas are will they last? will it happen for one event and thats all? and how many will help? i worry you will get a certain group doing new things and others doing nothing.
sometimes it can take something as serious as stopping doing events before people will contribute more, sum might think oh they will be ok, they dont need my help!

i can only comment with my views on hw events i attended personally, or what i have seen when at a fw and hw event.
perhaps we could run something at a event where a member of the audiance gets to drive a robot, or more interaction with roboteers? i know were all busy at events inbetween fights sorting our robots or talking to each other, but i think that the crowd get a bit ignored inbetween shows when their wanting autographs, pic of your robot, or to ask some questions, it seems to be our kids doing the autographs lol.
i think robochallenge is good with the demos with razer, talking how it works, showing its power, i think the crowd understand it more when its destroying a microwave or something, rather than seeing 2 robots just fighting covered in hardox, ... cosmetic panels could also be good, as show fights or for the grudge matches, your all well engineered people to make something that would work. i dont know stick a bit of think ali somewhere that wont cause harm and tell tiberious where it is so he can make a hole or something i dont know lol, maybe a cheap wheelchair box robot thats covered in ali, that always gets damaged or something. i could be wrong but i think the audiance want to see phsyical damage, do you see alot of that at hw fights? and yes i understand we all want as little damage as possible. what about a refbot? or a referee like on gladiators? again a pantomime theme..
i think team big bro's chair and water squirting robots are brilliant, really entertaining.
i also really like the idea about making it a bit more entertaining with stories, pantomime and that. Those plunderbird guys and chromalot used to crack me up with their panto stuff, believe that would work very well as with hyping up the fights/grudge matches.
when my daughter went to one event all she kept talking about was the girls dressed in pink with the sweets!! karoline and someone else was it? the chair and water squirting robot, skeletron, its surprising what kids remember with everything else going on.. she remembered more of that than the actual fighting..
what does surprise me is my daugher is 10 and when she does a talk about robots at our school, all the kids are saying whats a fighting robot? whats robotwars? which i find unbelievable how many kids have never heard of it

you may already do alot of this ideas i dont know.... it would be interesting to see how other eo's are finding these hard financial times? can you guys share ideas? what works what doesnt?

i know we go on about robot wars thats now in the past, but i guess we all understand why their was the pantomine theme, talking with roboteers before and after a fight, fixing draws for fights? (dont know if thats true), damage, grudge matches etc.... it was all about the viewings which is what eo's need.

would feedback forms help? see what the audiance liked and didnt, offer a incentive, a prize draw for free tickets or something.

[mightymouse]

Re: The future of roboting

There are some people here who seem to remember RobotWars as a serious combat fighting show. RobotWars was a light entertainment show. Machines were chosen because they looked good on TV or because they would fall apart when the good machines came on. Why did Velocirippa get on series 3,4&5 when Dantomkia and M2 could not? It was because my team-mate was a graphic artist and did a superb paint job, the machine was rubbish.

If we want to attract the kids we need to appeal to the things that give the kids a buzz. Mini Mighty Mouse has gotten the audience vote for fights when the machine has been uncontrollable and I am struggling to drive it, Why? Because it entertained them. The judges never vote for it but the audience do.

Some of the roboteers are taking the robot combat side too seriously, what we would consider as a close evenly matched well driven fight is boring to Joe Public. 10 flippers in the arena at the same time is just plain bedlam, but, the audience love it. If we put a smile on peoples faces, however we do it, they will tell their mates and come back next year.

Serious robot combat has a place - we all want to face the best and be judged on it - but trying to explain to an audience that a machine sits in a corner for 30 seconds because it's opponent is immobilised and it will not continue the fight in case it compromises the machine for the next round, is boring..... and will send people home feeling cheated.

Our machines are dangerous and can only be used in a well built arena, the arena costs money to build, erect, store and transport. The only way to recuperate these costs is to put on a show that will attract an audience, if we do not then we will indeed be left running our machines in car parks, like in the early days. The EO's take a big gamble putting on these shows and have had their fingers burnt financially, but, they are all still there doing it. We as roboteers have a duty to help out the EO's, if they try something different, go with it, it might just entertain Joe Public and put bums on seats.

Trev

[dgr]

Re: The future of roboting

Here, here Trevor!

I also like the idea of a more enthusiatic commentry to the events, hyping up the fights and getting the audience to feel more involved.

[craig_anto]

Re: The future of roboting

we need 2 sides of robot combat need taking into account, Entertainment and Competition.

Robot Wars was Entertainment, good robots didnt always qualify it was what looked best on camera, and competition was plotted and barring suprise victories and breakdowns it went like clockwork,

Battlebots was a competition and on TV were the highlights of the competition, towards the end the heavyweights were featured less and less.

Audience figures for both were roughly the same, Robot Wars had a slightly longer run with higher figures but the peaks were proportional to each other and lows were almost identical.

This dilema for EO's for me particularly (and i'm sure is the same for everyone else) is to push for a competition or an entertainment event, its difficult to combine the both but not impossible.

We have an event pencilled in for October (not on one of RR's or RL's weekends promise this time) We're going to run a new style of competition and we're hoping to include middleweights and walkers (even if I had to build them myself)

[grafix]

Re: The future of roboting

Its not often that i post here. However, I always read the forum. I have been following this thread for quite a while now with interest. It started out pretty bad then settled down. Lots of good words, lots of good voices and lots of truths. I love and fully agree with Jonnos words. I am VERY glad that he hasnt thrown in the towel.

First, I would like to say a few words about Jonno:-

He had a very bad start as an eo. Anyone who remembers the first Newark event with RR and the pre forum slanging matches will know what I am on about but I am very happy that Jonno came through for us all. Since then he has gone from strength to strength. There are not many eos around. No one puts on as many shows as Jonno. I do not think that even if all the other eos worked their butts off that we would be able to cover the hole that Jonnos leaving would cause. His events are good social calander events. The days of the old events are long gone with the demise of TV coverage. Its just not possible to pull in the crowds so to get the audience figures in that the current eos get is great work.

Long may Jonno reign over us!

Trevor's comments are so spot on that its very hard to pick any holes in his arguement so I wont even bother. Trevor is right about RobotWars being a good ENTERTAINMENT show. Its not a contest, never was and never will be. However, having said that, its not fixed either. BattleBots was a combat sport on TV and if you compare the two shows I would always prefere RobotWars. Its much more fun. I think we all have to admit that. Now, knowing this, Trevors other words about roboteers being too competative is also true. The crowds needs action, they need destruction, loud noises, excitement. Yes, I was very competative and yes, I was also guilty of putting the fight before the show but times have changed. We need to focus on the show not the scoreboard. We can work the score out down the pub afterwards.

Help eos? About time that was mentioned. Its all of our responsibility to ensure that the sport goes on. To that end all eos need help. yes, they do make money. But most shows are at cost or at a loss. RoboDome used to run shows in the height of the RobotWars popularity and yes, we made money. Any one who went to our shows would know that all money went into the arena or to the Roboteers. This is no longer possible. Its commercial suicide. What can we do to help eos? Well, if theres an event planned in your area why not try to publicise it? Someone has already mentioned this ( sorry but I cant scroll up and get your name so I cant give you the credit for this but you know who you are). Turn up very early and help setup the arena and show. Stay longer and help strike it dowm. Every little bit helps. I know that many roboteers already do this and that they are regulars in the helping camp but more needs to be done. Maybe eos should post their ideas of what help they need. tasks devided and shared is a great help.

More school events should be held. More school and village fetes need to be attended. Even if its a static show. Your machines need to be out there and on show to the general public. I dont know how much longer this can go on but it wont be too long before you are all in a farmers field with straw bails as arena walls having fun and remembering the good old days when we had audiences who used to pay to watch you.

Terry Carlin tried to get a new form of contect going. It never took of which is a shame really. He put a lot of good work into that. Maybe someone from the FRA committee can dig it out of the archives and post it. Someone also mentioned that the format needs to change. Make it exciting etc. I dont know what or how but with the brains that we all know are out there in the roboteering world I am sure that some heads can get together and devise a way of generating more interest. terrys idea involved Clans etc. I liked it.

I have run out of words for the moment and my two fingers are aching from all this typing so I will leave it here.


regards.

Mike.

[swanaldo]

Re: The future of roboting

Hello Gang. A quick post while i have the net.

Entertainment for robots and the crowd is very much enjoyable for the roboteers and the crowd but lets remember there has to be a crowd there in the first place. Jonno is working very hard at the mo getting new ways at getting to the public and i think with some hard work and a few new ways we have planned there is new hope.

First for a robot combat event is getting the crowds there.
Second is geting the robots there
Third is the entertainment we do so mabee the crowd will attend the same venue next year.

The crowds will come i am sure. i dont know about other EO's and how they sell tickets but Jonno i know is committed and is working hard for his business and us roboteers.

There are few committed roboteers out there now but i believe there will be a growth in heavys. Maelstrom and its ressurrection is a prime example as is Hydra and their robots. there will be more i am sure. Team Orr are working to get their heavy up and running too. We as a community welcome all new blood and we all are willing to help all newcomers as much as we can. But for teambud we will attend as many events as we can.

Entertainment....Guildford was one of the best shows for entertainment for a while now. Thor/ Envy with MD.....the crowd was loving it. The oota by maelstrom in 4 seconds was quick but on the flipside was impressive for the crowd. And didnt you all hear the MASSIVE chear when Envy ootad Iron Awe. Strapping a tv to Thor and THZ chasing it around the arena was also good. We can have competition fights but i think if we played more on doing BOYS and their TOYS stuff it will be good entertainment. The event we did in the middle east took a couple of days to stage up but once we got a format sorted even the most basic of robots can be entertaining.

Teambud will of course take the role of the baddies.

We need a meeting KANE so can you please call a date. If its a problem then we can have a nice chitchat at riat in my bar. Might not be bringing the actual bar by the way as i havent even started building it yet so it might be changed into a wine bar. But the marquee WILL be there. Drunkeness is assured.

I am sure there are people who get offended when a debate is going on but please dont be offended and everything said is constructive and posative. We are a good community and i like our hobby. It gets me away to different citys and the social side of things is always good.

EO's working together..........i had it in my head that mabee the uk champs like this year could be spread between EO's with the points system active at both RL and RR. With both the RR gang HAVING to attend a RL event and the RL gang HAVING to attend a RR event to qualify for points.This also would be a good way of bringing our community together.

The FRA at the moment i will admit is quiet. There are 50 bloody members (too many anyway) on the governing body and only a few actually getting involved in this debate. Personally i am dissapointed and it just shows me that some just dont have the best interest for the sport. If there isnt a productive posting from EVERY member on the governing body then i think we should have a look at shrinking the FRA. GET INVOLVED OR GET OUT.

Strong words i know but its my opinion and i am ready for the backlash.

Meeting soon please Kane.

Shane

[swanaldo]

Re: The future of roboting

Oh just 1 other thing......

The fanfic section is there for the up coming roboteers. There are people there who have been writing events and have actually turned their hand to building feathers and buying heavies. People should actually spend the time and read some on their stuff you might actually be flattered that they are afterall YOUR fans.

Keep up the good work fanfic you have my full backing no worries.