October 15, 2026
DRG#10: Remote Operation, Simulator Development, and Devcon Mumbai Game Demo
Participants: sn37, anurajenp
The DRG group discussed the importance of real-world applications and events in shaping their robotics research direction. A key strategic point emerged around making their work legible to potential sponsors and investors—while interactive games can serve as engaging entry points, there must be a clear narrative linking the fun experience to concrete future applications with real economic impact. The group is progressing on simulator development, with anurajenp sharing the yakrobot-simulator repository. For Devcon Mumbai, the team is planning an innovative demonstration: adapting the yoink game (previously played on Farcaster) to control actual robots, where participants would capture an onchain flag to operate the robot, with results tracked on a leaderboard. This demo exemplifies their strategy of using interactive experiences to make distributed robotics tangible and exciting to a broad audience.
- Real-world applications and events expose problems that wouldn't surface in theoretical work and help ground research direction more quickly and effectively.
- Interactive games and demos are valuable evangelizing mechanisms to create the 'aha moment' for potential sponsors, but require explicit framing connecting the fun experience to tangible future economic applications.
- The group plans to adapt the Farcaster yoink game for real robot control at Devcon Mumbai, using onchain flag capture as the mechanic to operate robots and tracking performance on a leaderboard.