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Hi all!
Third post (and the first not involving travel or parachutes)...
One of the things my fiancee and I are looking at doing in the next couple of months is picking up a couple of little flipper bot kits (we've put in queries about the Battle Antz from Roaming Robots and the Mini Bots from RoboChallenge) and sharing them with friends and family (if nothing else, on my fiancee's side there are some absolutely adorable little nieces and nephews who would love these things - and this might start a trend, and soon there would be more than just the two flippers we start with).
So, the idea is to put some controllers in the kids' (and adults') hands, set the little flippers on the living room floor, and have little events and battles (hopefully without destroying the living room in the process). I'm imagining that I'm not the only one who has done such a thing, so I've got a couple of ideas about activities, and I was hoping that I might be able to get some feedback:
1. Flipper challenge - on the floor are a number of (non-breakable) items. Each item flipped is worth a point, and whoever can flip the most items wins. Two variants - non-contact (robots can't flip each other) and contact (robots can flip each other, but they don't win points for it).
2. Robot hockey - two goals are set aside, with a hockey puck in the middle. Whichever team manages to get the puck into the goal scores a point. Robots can flip each other. One point of concern - are these flippers powerful enough to flip a hockey puck in such a way that it could endanger furniture, television sets, or another robot?
3. Extreme robot hockey - two goals set aside, but no hockey puck - the idea is to get the other team's robots into the goal.
4. Living room robot battle - yeah...I'm not actually all that sure how to make that one work (I think my friends and relatives might be a bit annoyed with me if I try to cut a pit into their living room floor). Perhaps a variant on extreme robot hockey with just one goal?
So...how do these sound? And might anybody have any other suggestions?
Best regards to all,
Robert Marks
PS: I would like to express my gratitude to both Roaming Robots and RoboChallenge for putting those little flipper kits out there in the first place. Over here in Canada, the only thing I've found on that level so far (granted, by web searches) is a push bot that while supposedly easy to assemble, would not be nearly as interesting to kids (and probably to the adults) as a flipper. And, an antweight-beetleweight spinner or axe bot would be stupidly dangerous for fun in a living room. So, those little flippers are just what the doctor ordered, as the saying goes.
Third post (and the first not involving travel or parachutes)...
One of the things my fiancee and I are looking at doing in the next couple of months is picking up a couple of little flipper bot kits (we've put in queries about the Battle Antz from Roaming Robots and the Mini Bots from RoboChallenge) and sharing them with friends and family (if nothing else, on my fiancee's side there are some absolutely adorable little nieces and nephews who would love these things - and this might start a trend, and soon there would be more than just the two flippers we start with).
So, the idea is to put some controllers in the kids' (and adults') hands, set the little flippers on the living room floor, and have little events and battles (hopefully without destroying the living room in the process). I'm imagining that I'm not the only one who has done such a thing, so I've got a couple of ideas about activities, and I was hoping that I might be able to get some feedback:
1. Flipper challenge - on the floor are a number of (non-breakable) items. Each item flipped is worth a point, and whoever can flip the most items wins. Two variants - non-contact (robots can't flip each other) and contact (robots can flip each other, but they don't win points for it).
2. Robot hockey - two goals are set aside, with a hockey puck in the middle. Whichever team manages to get the puck into the goal scores a point. Robots can flip each other. One point of concern - are these flippers powerful enough to flip a hockey puck in such a way that it could endanger furniture, television sets, or another robot?
3. Extreme robot hockey - two goals set aside, but no hockey puck - the idea is to get the other team's robots into the goal.
4. Living room robot battle - yeah...I'm not actually all that sure how to make that one work (I think my friends and relatives might be a bit annoyed with me if I try to cut a pit into their living room floor). Perhaps a variant on extreme robot hockey with just one goal?
So...how do these sound? And might anybody have any other suggestions?
Best regards to all,
Robert Marks
PS: I would like to express my gratitude to both Roaming Robots and RoboChallenge for putting those little flipper kits out there in the first place. Over here in Canada, the only thing I've found on that level so far (granted, by web searches) is a push bot that while supposedly easy to assemble, would not be nearly as interesting to kids (and probably to the adults) as a flipper. And, an antweight-beetleweight spinner or axe bot would be stupidly dangerous for fun in a living room. So, those little flippers are just what the doctor ordered, as the saying goes.
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