R/C Min-Mech Battle Arena

First, a little bit of background - I, like almost everyone else on the planet, have wanted to ride/own a mech ever since I was a child. Unfortunately, roboticists and engineers are taking a little too long in bringing my dream to fruitation. In Japan, however, there is currently a competition known as ROBO-ONE for small humanoid robots. The robots are remote-controlled and they wrestle other robots for the championship title. They move pretty fluidly, rapidly, have some pretty cool moves, and are relatively cheap. They're basically mini-mechs.

Now for my idea - I envision a room with a bunch of small cockpit pods into which combatants step into. Within the cockpit, the players will find all of the buttons, switches, and levers that are necessary to control a mech along with a nice assortment of screens and monitors. Additionally, the cockpits will be mounted on a hydrolic frame. Each cockpit controls a small mech (probably 6-8 inches tall, a foot at most) via remote control. The mechs are placed in a battle arena simulating a variety of battlefields and conditions using miniature models and what not. The mech's head houses a camera - what the mech sees, the player sees from the cockpit. Overlayed on the images recieved from the mech are targetting reticles, ammo counts, radars, etc.

The environment in which the mechs fight wil be semi-destructable. The mechs could be made to fire small projectiles or battle it out via augmented reality. In addtion, as the mech recieves damage, pieces of its armor and body will fall off (the parts can be put back on after the battle). As the mech takes steps, moves, and takes battle damage, the cockpit will shake accordingly.

The advantage of this over just playing a mech video game is the spectator element - people would be able to watch the action, while the players would feel like they are really a part of a battle. It's a little like the difference between riding in a go-kart and playing a video game about go-karts or playing paintball vs. an FPS on your PC. The only reason I mention augmented reality is for the sake of logisitics.

A system like this could also be applied to R/C tanks, boats, cars, airplanes (dogfights!), submarines, etc. Hell you could even combine all of those vehicles on one battlefield for a truly epic battle!