Overall I’m pretty happy with RoboPacers, and I join one most of the time when I Zwift. I use them because I prefer to ride in a group rather than on my own. I don’t use Zwift for structured training, I just want to get on and ride with people whilst I get some cardio in, and they are always there when I start riding, rather than me needing to arrange myself around a group ride or event start time.
I tend to go for the largest group that’s going at about the pace (W/kg) I want. If one D.Miguel has 80 riders with them, and another has 30, I’m going with the first one. That means I’m riding the same routes most of the time which is a little uninteresting, but it is what it is given my general preference to ride with more people than fewer.
Something I don’t like is sometimes getting “dropped” inadvertently, sometimes by getting too far off the front. The distance I can be in front or behind seems to vary either by pack speed or group size. I’m not sure which, but either way it seems sometimes I can be 40m off the front and be OK, while other times I’m being warned to drop back much sooner. The clarity as to how close I am to being dropped isn’t there.
Yes, it’s probably my own fault, but sometimes I get carried away or distracted.
I’d like to see some indication of where on the route the pacer/group is. Just something simple would do the trick. I don’t know but I feel like sometimes knowing how much left there is to complete a loop would keep me riding long enough to do that rather than dropping out.
I’d like an option to turn off the repetitive scripted “conversation” from the bots. Or at least have a lot more variety in what they say. To me it’s just noise. They’re not AI-backed, so it’s not like you can have a “conversation” with them, and they’re not responding to anything someone says.
Something that might be cool in the RoboPacer of the Future™ would be something that does use generative AI to engage in conversations with people around it. Or even something that knows who’s within the group, does a DB lookup for events they’re signed up to and says something like “Hey, Daren, good luck in your race later!” Or it could say “Good morning, Daren” when I join the group, based on my local time, “Nice FTP bump you got yesterday, Daren!”, “Tough race just now, Daren!” if I rode at VO2max for x minutes, etc. The RoboPacers (could) have access to all the data to enable personalisation, and I feel like there’s a lot of scope to make RoboPacers really feel like someone I’m riding with, rather than something.
Of course, this would also come with privacy settings so individuals could disable such RP interaction if they wish.
