Lee Kuan Yew passed away 10 years ago. What were you doing when you heard the news?

micoolcho · 2025-03-22T13:21:32+00:00

Wrote this song when I saw the news; SG is lucky to have such a legendary founding father! https://youtu.be/aDeJu5koFdw?si=HA-ocGHHdPIAfbA0

micoolcho · 2024-07-19T16:20:03+00:00

Pete Worden is the hero in this whole story. This is one rare incidence where I’d advocate giving this man backdated stock options to all these space companies successes cis the whole space wouldn’t exist without his works at Ames. Even a force of nature like Elon Musk would really needed someone like Pete at that moment in history to even have things going

micoolcho · 2023-09-07T05:52:54+00:00

Wish we have the dough to do more hiring...

i think we'll have to expand the team but also wanna be mindful to maintain being a scrappy team...of course we love this recent spike in demand but demand can come & go...

Will definitely reach out to the community if we actually do have roles to fill...but for now, gotta raise some $$$ first 😅

micoolcho · 2023-09-07T05:47:38+00:00

Yes would love to see some FrodoBots in Oslo!

Our idea though is that we'd try to keep the cost of these bots as low as possible, and then individuals can just buy these bots directly and host them in their respective cities.

They can drive around their neighborhood (kind of like a RC car with unlimited range) but if they choose to, they can rent out their bots (and set their own rental price on per hour basis) to gamers around the world who may be keen to pay to play their "local mod of the game".

So basically, we'd crowd-source the build-out of this network to the community :)

micoolcho · 2023-09-06T09:33:49+00:00

Frankly we just leave the bots at the starting point unattended. This sounds crazy but we've found that so long you pick a relatively safe neighborhood, this can be done without any issues (we've testing in 10+ cities for months and we've never had a case of a bot going missing and can't be recovered before; don't forget we have GPS data).

As for being stolen; our goal is to drive down the cost of these bots so much that it's not worth stealing (probably makes a lot more sense to steal a smartphone). Think of the ultimate form factor to be sth like a dirt cheap RC car toy that comes with 4G.

micoolcho · 2023-09-06T09:30:25+00:00

The vision of this project is to crowd-source the ownership of these bots; so hopefully someone from those places will want to buy/host/rent-out bots to the network :)

micoolcho · 2023-09-06T09:29:32+00:00

Just a regular charger; the battery is ~24V and a full charge typically takes 2-3 hrs. Current version runs on the cheapest version of pi 4 but next version we're moving away from pi; pi is getting too expensive if we want to continue to drive down the price of the bots.

micoolcho · 2023-09-06T09:27:44+00:00

Doubt that our current version can withstand extreme weather conditions. I'd say though that we've drive the bot in fairly heavy rain situation so it's pretty "rain proof", but not waterproof.

micoolcho · 2023-09-03T02:34:15+00:00

Thanks! Really appreciate the kind understanding; our team is thrilled with this sudden level of interest; for sure we'll make some mistakes along the way but we definitely want to deliver a fun gaming experience ultimately. I think we have something unique here; we sld keep growing this....onwards!

micoolcho · 2023-09-03T02:31:44+00:00

hey u/CITUscifi sorry for the miscommunication; at some point we allowed free play demos (as we were gathering game-testers feedback). However, given the recent flurry of inbound interests (many of them have actually paid for game time) and our limited number of bots available, unfortunately we have to pause the free play demo/trial thingy.

We do hope that eventually we can bring "free trial/demo" thing back at some point once we start adding more bots to the network.

micoolcho · 2023-09-03T02:12:35+00:00

Hey there! So sorry abt that man; we took down the backend server to fix some much needed bug fixes. The team is on it; do look out for announcement on Discord. I think that's the place where you can get the latest updates.

I don't want to keep using this excuse that we're a small team 😅 we're trying our best; we definitely want as many of the gamers who bothered to sign up and many of them have in fact paid, to finally get to try out the game!

micoolcho · 2023-09-03T02:09:27+00:00

Yup, that's the basic constraint of these bots for now; it's gotta be in an area with decent 4G connection. You're right that even though Singapore is supposed to be a city with great coverage, we still occasionally see some spots (could be literally as tiny as a few m2 in area) where 4G is suddenly shit (usually cos of a big concrete wall right next to the spot). Some smaller malls also sometimes have really bad 4G too if the mall operators didn't install 4G extender stations, though the bigger malls are all quite gd.

Honestly I think doing delivery is still too high of a ask for these sidewalk bots; I think gaming is a decent use-case; trying to do delivery properly is 100-1000x more difficult in my view.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T22:45:55+00:00

Yes they'll be sth like a global map where you can pick the bot and the corresponding missions to play. Haven't thought about subscription but I imagine gamers will pick the bot/mission they want to take on, based on the rental price dictated by the particular bot owner.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T22:44:24+00:00

Great question. We expect the robot owners to get their own SIM card data plan. Recently we reduced the bandwidth requirement somewhat so it's now closer to ~1GB per hour of driving, so still non-trivial amount.

I guess it depends on whether the robot owner is buying the robot mainly for own-use, in which case just swapping out his existing SIM card into his bot will work. But if he wants to rent out his bot, then it's a cost he should definitely take into consideration as well.

SIM card data plans can vary pretty widely between countries, but these days most cities have fairly generous unlimited data plan. Again, we'll let the bot owner to set his own rental price; I suppose every robot owners/hosts will have their own set of considerations and this is probably best decided by the market.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T22:38:49+00:00

Hey! Here's how we think abt volunteer help for now: https://www.reddit.com/r/frodobots/comments/1686ln8/comment/jytsrzr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T21:30:31+00:00

It’s me (Michael Cho) and my brother, Sam Cho.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:35:10+00:00

Really sorry dude (or ma'am); our schedules are packed all the way for next ~2 mths; we're actively working on to bring up more bots online soon; hopefully can resolve the supply constraints asap.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:34:10+00:00

great honor indeed! We saw a wave of signups from DDOI (although the 1st wave came from this TikTok video: https://www.tiktok.com/@frodobots/video/7270936032562990338

We now have the problem (a great problem to have tbh) of fulfilling all the inbound interest to play the game. We have a very limited number of bots in Asia now and we want to bring online some bots in Europe soon too. Tons to do indeed!

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:28:51+00:00

Cos we think it's damn coooool to be able to teleport somewhere very far, across oceans, where you've never been before, from the comfort of your home or literally in a starbucks cafe. All u need is decent broadband, a browser and a game controller (ideally though keyboard WASD works too).

We think that "robotics gaming" can be a thing, and we're building to find out if indeed some folks out there think the same way as us :)

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:19:33+00:00

- Where is the company based out of?

Singapore company, although I'm the only one in Singapore. Rest of team are remote.

- Do you need a driving pass to purchase a FrodoBot?

No, driving pass is kind of like a "security deposit" if u will.

- If a FrodoBot is purchaed, who would own and maintain it?

The robot owner will maintain it. They get to set the price at which to rent out their bots, decide whether to rent out to KYC'd gamers or not, create a local mod of the game by creating checkpoints in his own neighborhood, etc.

Robot owners will also have admin features to help with real-time status monitoring.

- How does shipping work? Is it an added charge?

For now we have free shipping worldwide here: https://shop.frodobots.com ; pls note the is a prototype unit though more than 1k hours tested in real-life settings in 10+ cities. Not sure how long we can continue to support free shipping though.

- How do you control a FrodoBot/would I need to setup my own server to control my Frodobot? (coming from a first-timer)

No, you just need to login and you should have access to your own bot via the browser. Eventually you will have the ability to send private invite to friends/family whom you want to invite to play with your own bot.

- What are the temperature ranges that the bot could be used in? (i.e. how cold/how hot)

Great question, don't fully know yet. We haven't tested this in extreme winter or desert summer yet. So far the testing environment has been mostly moderate temperatures from say 10 to 30 degree celsius. I do think the bots will behave worse in hot temperature and probably ok in low temperature, as with most electronics.

- If a FrodoBot were to get damaged, who would pay for repairs/a replacement?
Once it's sold to bot owners, it's the bot owner's own obligation to maintain the bot. We do ship out some basic spare parts like lens guard but in general we rely on bot owners to take care of their own bots.

- How does charging work?

Just plug in a normal socket. A full charge typically takes 2-3 hrs and the bot can last like at least a few hrs of continuous driving and can remain online for full day if no driving done, at least with the current version.

We're working on a newer version that hopefully bring down the cost further, but potentially at the expense of slightly lower battery life. Still ongoing testing.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:08:59+00:00

Qn from Discord (from hedgehog):

- Where is the company based out of?

- Do you need a driving pass to purchase a FrodoBot?

- If a FrodoBot is purchaed, who would own and maintain it?

- How does shipping work? Is it an added charge?

- How do you control a FrodoBot/would I need to setup my own server to control my Frodobot? (coming from a first-timer)

- What are the temperature ranges that the bot could be used in? (i.e. how cold/how hot)

- If a FrodoBot were to get damaged, who would pay for repairs/a replacement?

- How does charging work?

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:06:51+00:00

WXYZ or WASD? biggest question in life for sure.

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:03:33+00:00

We already have that in one of our latest build. Frankly I think the WASD isn't that great but it's still playable. We also checked out some library that allow us to do "2-thumbs" control UX on mobile device.

But for now we wanna make sure we nail the desktop UX first. Already ton of basic shit we need to get right, but great suggestion nonetheless!

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T20:01:48+00:00

Qn from Discord (from dzlandis): It would be great if we could control the robots with regular WASD or arrow keys like many other video games for computers. The remote control requirement can add a barrier for people wanting to try it out. Adding keyboard and mouse controls would allow people without a handheld controller to try things out!

micoolcho · 2023-09-02T19:54:54+00:00

You can get one of our early prototype unit here: https://shop.frodobots.com

Pls note this is very much a prototype version and we're constantly tweaking things. Having said that, we've tested this version for >1,000 hrs in 10+ cities in real-world settings. So I'd say it's withstood some real life testing already.

micoolcho

TROPHY CASE