This one might be tricky but I know it would be popular. A speeck synthesizer and recognition system, voice recognition would be easier than a remote control.
Yes it would… 
Wait until you get four operators and two coaches per Alliance in a competition… Plus the audience…
In the competition there could be a special event for Speech reconizing bots, and there could be a “quiet room” or something. The audience could watch outside or online via webcam.
Seems unlikely… I don’t think the technology is quite there yet, for any sort of precision control.
I will bring it up at our new product meeting.
Thanks, maybe at least a speech sythesizer. I have one on my non-vex robot, srry no pics
Sensory Inc. makes a demo speech recognition board that I have used, which can recognize up to 16 distinct voice commands. It worked great with a Parallax BSX Stamp microcontroller. The latest version is capable of recognizing even more words, and is used for telephone and cell phone applications. Parallax sells two voice synthesis boards that are used for phone applications and toys with both human sounding male and female voices.
My 1980’s Heathkit Hero 1 robot has a Votrax SC-01 board with text to speech capabilities, although it sounds very robotic.
yah ive heard about sensory inc. 
do you know how much there recognition thing costs? right now for speech synthesis i use the devantech sp03 (works really well) but i would like a recognition module
one of us could problay do it… in a year!
I purchased a demo board from Sensory for about $90 a few years ago.
Information on the new Sensory Voice Recognition module is found at the following link on the Sensory Inc web site:
http://www.semiconductorstore.com/pages/suppliers/sensory/VT_Stamp_DK.asp