A little history of the Pittelli X-Prize. Will Montgomery and I battled
R/C warships for over a decade before starting the tank combat hobby.
During our warship days, which had many ingenious participants, there
were plenty of interesting ideas for automatic weapons and mechanisms of
various kinds. Some members, such as the legendary Carl Camurati, not
only thought of extremely clever mechanisms, but he actually built them
and demonstrated them on the lake. Carl's mechanisms were so clever
that many warship combat rules were added just to stop them from being used.
When we started the tank hobby, Will and I deliberately designed the
rules to encourage people to try new things and we were blessed with a
strong group of technological founding fathers who exchanged ideas
frequently (after a little spying), developed effective solutions and
posted details for the entire world to see (something that we couldn't
do in the early part of the warship hobby). Each such member not only
worked hard to solve a technological or manufacturing problem, but they
also kept evolving and writing about the solution so that everyone could
benefit from the work. That tradition continues to this day, as
exemplified by the first, albeit flaky, multi-tube rocket launcher
deployed on the battlefield recently. No doubt, it will improve as
people build on the now-proven concept.
For every Carl in the R/C combat world, there are 99 others who talk
about building new technology but never actually do even the basic work
required to prove the idea right or wrong. Over the years, we've heard
from a fair number of such people, both on the Internet and in person,
who throw out an endless stream of ideas that may or may not be
possible. Personally, I have no problem with the endless stream of
ideas, hair-brained or otherwise, because they occasionally make me
think of something interesting to tackle, which is what I like to do.
So, I say, keep rambling on.
But, over the years, one specific "idea" kept being repeated enough by
certain folks that it started to irritate my tanker pride. Specifically,
the so-called "autonomous robot" folks kept saying that they would
"build an automatic targeting system" to easily win a battle. Laser
beams, sonar, IR and brilliant software would all be deployed to make
human operators obsolete, turning the tank combat hobby into a kids
game. Often, such comments would be blurted out in person after talking
for only a minute or two about our hobby. Not questions, mind you, but
bold, in-your-face statements of "fact" as if the technology already
existed. After (politely?) listening to such comments for many years I
finally decided that enough was enough. Instead of debating them
(Einstein vs. 2nd grader?), I offered cold hard cash to anyone who could
actually do what they think is easily done. Over the years, the prize
value has increased, but nobody has taken up the challenge. It would
seem that the percentage of talkers to doers in the autonomous robot
crowd is close to infinity.
I personally believe that the challenge can indeed be met today without
spending more than the X-Prize itself. All of the requisite hardware is
already commercially available for less than a thousand dollars and the
software required can be pulled together from a couple different
public-domain projects on the Internet. My solution, which I have been
researching since the X-Prize was first offered, *will* work in bright
sunlight, *will not* require FoF beacons, *will* be able to determine
the front, side and back of an opposing vehicle and, most importantly,
*will not* shoot at humans in the target area. In short, a solution
good enough to force the rules committee to ban it from the hobby ;-)
On 12/10/2013 10:17 AM, isaac goldman wrote:
In all seriousness, while I and many other people are no doubt trying
for the prize, there is a reason its been unclaimed for ten years...
--
--
You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group.
To post a message, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected]
Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R/C Tank Combat" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
