So, your plans for world domination didn’t quite go as you hoped. You clone army didn’t stand up to repeated photo-copying and so it’s back to the drawing board.

Rather than mope around in your hidden lair of darkness (or your bedroom) why not get back into the fray… but this time you could focus your efforts on creating a virtual army of smart robots to do battle – or at least compete in a series of challenges to determine the winner.

While most mad scientists have to assemble their robots from a scrap-yard of parts using plans downloaded from some of the weirder parts of the internet you have an advantage…

You only have to develop the control package for the robot which will compete inside a virtual environment. To get started you’ll need to install and set up the Microsoft Robotics Studio (a free add-on that works with trial and express versions of Visual Studio) and you can develop using your favorite .Net language. Once tested and ready to rumble you upload the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 playback file (.PLB) and some supporting documentation and … may the best robot win!

Vista sidebar gadgets and embeddable BotCards will let you stake out a claim and keep track of your progress – but if you do well and are one of the finalists… well, you’ll just have to read the clues from the RoboChamps League Commissioner to find out…