Designing a robot is easy. Well, not really. But what's even harder is getting enough resources (i.e. cash) to get your design from, uh, design, to actual operating death machine, or whatever your own personal robotics bent is.
Carnegie Mellon is helping to nudge things along by hosting a venture competition called RoboBowl specifically for robotics. If you're well funded and have no idea what a venture competition is, then you're very very lucky, but for the rest of us, venture competitions are a way of matching people with great ideas with people who have a lot of money to turn great ideas into commercial products. They're probably not looking for the next Roomba clone, but if you've got a concept that embodies the "next generation of robotics" (whatever that may be), RoboBowl can help get you the money you need to make it happen.
Here's how it works: for a modest $100 entry fee, teams can submit a business summary that will be reviewed by judges. The semi-finalists will then make online presentations, and the five best will win a cool $5,000 and a chance to present their ideas in person directly to a panel of judges and win an additional $20,000. Tasty.
RoboBowl is actually intended to be several different competitions, the first of which is focused on healthcare and quality of life robotics, including:
- Surgical & Interventional Robotic Systems
- Robotic Rehabilitation & Prosthetic Systems
- Robotic Assistive & Wellness Systems (e.g. mobility, manipulation, social assistance aids)
- Robotic Telemedicine Systems
- Logistic & Operational Hospital Robotic Systems
Interested? Keep reading