Not racing as such, but there are a few of us playing around with "Slot Monster Trucks".

Check out the Monster Slot Trucks, Tanks and Pullers Facebook group.

or this video of some of my Slot Monster Trucks in action. Monster Jam 1:32 Freestyle Monster Trucks

 

This hobby is probably more about the social side than the racing so that excludes robots, so ultimately the next step is more people...or people-like robots

 

Hello!

I am Álvaro Martínez, I'm the CEO and founder of a educational robot startup. We are looking for a new scope in our company. So, why don't we mix two of our hobbies? Robots and motorsport.
This is why we are here now. We would like to make the next generation slot racing. So we were wondering. How do you imagine the next step in slot racing? What would you like to see in it?

Alvaro,
The next gen slot racing scene will stretch and integrate currently available technologies.
The current hobby spans old school analogue (1 lane per car) through to radio controlled digital racing with lane changers. 16 cars on four lanes.
The digital scene offers most opportunity to engage and deploy new tech.

At the digital end of the spectrum there are those who like all of the bells and whistles (fuel simulation etc), and those (like me) who don't.

My Preference would be to see an integrated offerring for radio controlled slot racing with onboard controllers that would support:

• integrated support for brushless motor technology.
• data collection on the telemetry of the car which could then be analysed after the race
• an ergonomically safe and sound controller, suitable for use in endurance racing and designed to be used by left and right handed drivers.

I'd suggest that you approach this from the slot car direction , rather than the robot direction.
Do you have any slot racers in your startup?
Maybe that would be a start point.

Have look at the slot.it "Oxigen" (TM) endurance e racing scene. Plenty of youtube footage of previous 24 hour events over the last decade.
This will give you an insight into the current state of play of the sport.

Alan W

PS as an afterthought, Robot controlled slot cars versus a human?
The ultimate " Turing test"?
I don't believe that AI and robotics could ever compete against the eye hand coordition of the skilled racer.

 

Computer with zero knowledge of chess is the best chess player in the world after 4 hours
Four o'clock. That's all a Google computer with zero knowledge of chess needed to become the best chess player in the world. Both humans and specialist chess computers have no chance against AlphaZero's artificial intelligence.

Ton Voermans 08-12-17, 14:17
It is not new that a computer beats humans. Then-world champion Gary Kasparov was defeated in 1997 by Deep Blue, a supercomputer from IBM. Since then, chess computers have gotten better and better and humans have no chance. It was an unprecedented sensation at the time that a machine managed to beat a human.

 

Slot racing as a sport survives in parallel with computer racing simulations. The two offer different experiences. Racing simulations put you in the car (at least the best ones do). Slot racing is done from trackside. The difference is slot racing is done in the physical world with actual hardware while racing simulations are entirely virtual.

Slot racing does not subject the driver to the noise, G-forces, shocks and vibration of real 1:1 racing. Racing simulations can replicate some of those features -- especially in the high-end simulations used by professional racing teams -- but those G-forces can't be sustained.

I don't see better racing simulations as a useful goal. The simulations used by Formula 1 teams come as close as practical in realism, to the point where actual Formula 1 drivers can learn and benefit from them. But their expense is way beyond what can be afforded simply for entertainment.

If you view slot racing as a sport in itself, rather than a first-person simulation of actual racing, there is still plenty of complexity there. Is there opportunity for technological improvements over what already exists? Well, that is the question you have posed.

What I might suggest is an improvement to the slotcar drive systems. The basics of slotcar motors and gearing have not changed much since the 1950's. That is, a permanent magnet DC motor with a commutator and a three-pole armature, plus either a crown and pinion gearset, or a sidewinder gearset. The one gearing innovation in the last 70+ years might be the anglewinder gearset.

As a slotcar builder myself I find it very frustrating that slotcar motors vary so much in performance. A motor with digital commutation and speed control has the potential to greatly improve this situation. Ideally motors of a specific brand and model could have indistinguishable performance. That could make slot racing much more fair. And make the job of the slotcar builder a bit less stressful.

I'll leave tires out of this discussion.

Could a slotcar have actual transmissions, with more than one ratio? Well, it has been done, if you are satisfied with just two ratios. Even in the smallest scale, HO, it was achieved decades ago.

But would the ability to shift gears improve slot racing? It might not. Real racers commonly take more than a minute to complete a lap. Slot racers rarely take more than ten seconds. On my own home track it can take less than four. Adding shifting to the driver's frenetic workload might be a step too far. Not unless we slow down the cars A LOT!

Which some slot racers might desire. Supersonic scale speeds are the current norm. Some folks would appreciate much more realistic scale speeds. That comes back to our digital motor. Dialing back its speed should be straightforward given digital control.

Some slot racers might desire more-scale speeds, but I suspect many more might not.

That's a start. Thanks for the question. Does this help?

 

Some folks would appreciate much more realistic scale speeds . . .

With realistic speeds it becomes necessary (in my opinion) to reduce car performance, i.e speed, grip, cornering, etc. I don't think many folk would like it.
For rallying I conducted a test a while back with a modified car that by today's standard would be considered very poor: It was slow, had a tendency to roll on corners at modest speed and the tyres were 'slippy' like the track surface, which was bumpy here and there. It certainly gave a more accurate rally feel, being nearer scale speed. Won't catch on though!

 

The best thing would be a robotic marshaling system, so each time you come off the robot puts it back on.

Andi

 

The best thing would be a robotic marshaling system, so each time you come off the robot puts it back on.

Andi

This may have been said in jest but it’s probably my favourite suggestion among those that are more “in the game”. With multicar digital systems there’s actually a developing need for this, beyond the fact people can be lazy and typically don’t want to marshal.

If a digital club has 12 members on a race night they can’t all race at once because half of them need to marshal, despite the fact they COULD all race at once if they didn’t need to worry about that. So you have a situation where you have to split the groups in heats and then you’re not that far from analogue. Some kind of automated marshal tech could legitimately solve this problem.

In fact, if you could combine slotless pathfinding so that a desloted but upright car that could drive itself back to the slot and redeploy the guide, maybe there’s a use for a technology there that so far nobody really cares for.

I definitely vote robo-marshal in complete sincerity.

~~~~~

BTW ref the chess-bot vs. ValentinAI Rossi discussion look up robo-race if you want to see an AI racing car take a hard right immediately into the pit wall once it starts up. I’d say that Max Verstappen has nothing to worry about just yet.

 

I'm not sure where AI starts and robotics stops but I can see a digital car that learns to race you, changing lap by lap, reading you and the race strategy, like a real world opponent would be a lot of fun, and I don't even do digital.

 

After some more thought it occurred to me that you could simulate the gearshifts of a transmission with your digital motor. I'd see that as a way to 'tune' your car -- you could program in different ratios. I'd think the upshifts/downshifts should be automatic, reducing the workload for the driver.

 

The future will be the same basic experience of slot cars (which has been proven very successful over the years) but without the slots on the track which will add more realism. Most likely a hidden wire under the track for each lane with some sort of magnetic guide that follows the path of the wire. The cars will most likely have their own power source and possibly recharge while driving on the straightaways. Think about how much more realistic the track will look with the cars racing around it. Also, no more having to keep the track rails clean.

 

If you took away the slot then it wouldn't be slot car racing - If you don't want a slot there are lots of smaller scale radio control cars that would suit slot less racing. If you still want something to keep the car on the track then MagRacing has/had a system like you describe -

 

Hello!
I am Álvaro Martínez, I'm the CEO and founder of an educational robot startup. We are looking for a new scope in our company. So, why don't we mix two of our hobbies? Robots and motorsport.
This is why we are here now. We would like to make the next generation slot racing. So we were wondering. How do you imagine the next step in slot racing? What would you like to see in it?
Thanks in advance!!

What an interesting question - what is the scope of you education robot? What does it do? What features does it have. In order to think how can robotics mix with slot cars we would need to know how the robotics part works. I think most people on here have a good idea of how slot cars work.
I would say most of us are into slot car racing as a hobby because of an interest in motorsport, mechanics and engineering. We enjoy taking small electric cars and building, tuning and running them. The hobby is enjoyable as a social activity where like minded people meet to talk cars and race them, can be a fun solo activity and also has competitive options for those that want that.

Whilst digital tech is available in slot cars and has some cool features - the simple track (plastic or wood) with a slot and a car with a guide has endured for a long time now. So what value would robotics offer slot car racing. What are we missing? There have been many attempts to create a ghost racer over the years because whilst a lot of us do gather in groups to race I dare say we spend more time solo on our home track testing and tuning. So some may want a robot car to race against. I am not aware of anything that that offers a competitive race car for solo racers.

What other tech does the robot control? My experience with educational robots suggests a lot of sensors / input devices - so maybe a device for identifying tuning options and monitoring car performance would be useful.


David

 

Hi Alvaro.
I’d suggest dividing up a slot track into, say, 3 or 4 sectors – divided by speed traps on the straights that the robot can read in real time. The students would then program the throttle map for each sector, variable with initial speed through the speed trap. Two student groups could then race, reprogram, race, etc. against each other. Fun times!

If you’re looking for a nice looking roboracer to copy, try this Roborace.

 

program the throttle map

Probably "throttle profile" would be a better term.

 

Some of us just like racing our cars and think digital is two steps too far

It would be interesting to see if you can come up with something to tempt an old luddite like me.

 

It was intended as a serious point but made in jest because in reality I see absolutely no way to achieve it... 😉

Andi

 

I don’t know, FaceTime was science fiction in 2001 A Space Odyssey!

 

This all sounds remarkably interesting but isn't this development - work - to - reality going to cost a lot of money for such a small niche in such a small hobby?

 

When people laugh at spending a few quid on an electric chassis flattener...who the hell is going to buy robots to put their car back on track!

 

Robot cranes at intervals round the track. The same technology could be used to help disabled people pick up things the've dropped and other uses, it could then trickle down to slot racing eventually!

Cheers,

John

 

My approach to no marshalling would be to never deslot by having the tip of the guide rotate 90 degrees under power. You would have to redesign the track to accommodate the new guide of course. You would still pay a penalty (lose time) for over driving however the car would recover itself and continue racing. As a bonus every car would look like a shelf queen.

 

My approach to no marshalling would be to never deslot by having the tip of the guide rotate 90 degrees under power. You would have to redesign the track to accommodate the new guide of course.

You would still pay a penality (lose time) for over driving however the car would recover itself and continue racing. As a bonus every car would look like a shelf queen.

Varney more or less did this 60 years ago.

 

https://www.slotforum.com/threads/varney-slot-car-set.210641/

Cheers,

John

 

Do we need any new innovations? Slot cars have been around for a century or so now and still work fine for most people. Digital in one form or another has been around for fifty or sixty years but probably took thirty or more years to really take off. Most other new ideas have not survived the lack of sales when people are happy with what they already have. Analog slot racing is a simple game that anyone can play. Digital adds a level of complexity that some enjoy and other don't. I have a feeling that any new ideas would have to aimed mainly at digital racers as analog is analog always has been and probably always will be.

 

Personally, I wonder what the point of this really was. The author has not even returned to the site after posting his question. Will he ever? I've seen enough of these pop up over the years to know they usually go nowhere, so I'm not even bothering to read the comments on this one. Until this guy shows up again, you might as well be shouting at clouds.

IMHO.

 

Until this guy shows up again, you might as well be shouting at clouds.

Do you really think most posts are for the original question/topic? I'm guessing more so for future readers and or an avenue to express themselves.

 

I enjoy reading the ensuing banter that follows this kind of question

 

After 60 years of participating in this hobby I find it fascinating we still have things to talk about.

 

Most of us here don't have that long in the hobby, a lot of us don't have a clue about pre-Millenium Slot cars and racing and most of it is lost to the majority of us as it was only recorded on paper.

 

It surprises me that I too can say that I've been watching little cars go round the track for over 60 years. In fact it surprises me that I'm still here to talk about it. I would still rather race than talk about racing though.