Re: Design Sharing
 

Sharing a design after ship but before the first regional is probably the best idea for any team. It gives other teams the opportunity to take a peek at the creations of all their favorite teams, begin strategizing against these robots, and ensures that their design will not be copied.

Re: Design Sharing
 

Oohh - this is going to be a very touchy subject.

There are 2 ways you can go in this - eather you can say "Gracious Professionalism" or you can say "each team is unique and should keep it that way." (or close to it - you know what i'm trying to hint at) But my view on this is something that is great - say a special action for the field or some sort of drive train - you should be able to share. I think by the time that you develop it and test it - other teams will have began their own robot design - and i'll put money that says the 2 will be incompatable. Some of the times you may be able to get away with it - but unless you are planning something close to that design - the other teams won't be able to "borrow" that design.

I say we share. Some teams will make something pretty generic (that it can go on all robots) so for thoes teams i don't see any huge problems. But for some of the veteran teams out there that have designed some very sweet drive train or some sort of mechanism - they should share the wealth. I realise that this will probally throw some flames - but seriously - if someone (after all the engineering/testing/ect...) released something - it will be probally close to impossible in the timeframe to "borrow" that design...:)

Re: Design Sharing
 

For our team at least the rookie teams if they want usually get to see the robot done a bit before ship date. and even a few others do we have a scrimage that we usually post pictures of right after ship date. Personally I have no problems sharing concepts but specific autocad docs that took our engineers 50+ hours of thier weekend to cook up for our team unless it's specific I would not share because I feel that defeats the point of brainstorming with your team, however yearly components (say like the wings from Icarus last year) and others like that need to be discussed because it aids the creativity of all teams to discuss a concept idea now how you implement that idea is up to you but I do think that helping the younger teams is something that us "mature" "professional" teams should do a lot more of. Last year we ended up mentoring over 7 FRC teams I beleive and about 4 different lego teams. We did everything we possibly could to help new teams and old alike even trying to ressurect an old idea of a state alliance to help coordinate sponsorships between teams so that the older teams didn't just snag all the good companies and leave the young ones out to dry. :]

(gets off pet peeve...)

Re: Design Sharing
 

I never really thought of that, but come to mention it, it's a very valid point. To order all the specific parts from suppliers around the country, plan out the mechanism, fabricate some parts, and assemble a complex mechanism would be incredibly difficult to do with even one or two weeks.

Re: Design Sharing
 

This is one of the ways FIRST is different from any other type of project.

In a corporate environment, intellectual property and trade secrets make something like design sharing next to impossible, unless there is a clear advantage for both parties. For example, I know a guy who works at Apple, and every time I see him I try to wheedle any sort of information about future products out of him that I can, but he's not even allowed to tell me what PRODUCT he works on. (That or he just likes to mess with me, which is entirely possible) Ultimately, at Apple, or GM, or UTC or any other company profit is the goal, not education.

Unfortunately, most FIRST teams are stuck serving several masters. On the one hand we have to please our sponsors, who often demand that we win, on the other hand we have to follow the spirit of FIRST, which emphasizes inspiration, and education. Sometimes you have to make trade-offs between those two goals. Sometimes you have to choose between a student design that won't work, or a mentor design. Or you have to choose between sharing something that will help the community, but might hurt your team, or keeping it to yourself. However, as the little quote thing on the top of the screen says, engineering is all about trade-offs. You just have to look at each case and decide which goal is more important for that case only. For example, sharing a simple, but useful gearbox design that will benefit rookie teams won't really hurt you. However, if your robots function is to drag goals around the field, sharing the design for your revolutionary goal-gripper mechanism might not be a great idea.

Re: Design Sharing
 

This is indeed a very difficult issue.

I'm over in electrical and programming and I am generally for sharing code and schematics wherever it is possible. There are many people (like me) who don't have the knowedge of others in these areas. I have to thank Kevin Watson especially for creating code for us and James Rickertsen for the math library to get us started.

However, there are cases where hiding designs is a good idea. I heard rumors about how awesome StangPS was, but how would it have been unique and impressive if their schematics and code were available for any other team to duplicate?

I see many teams share ideas and designs with those who need assistance. Meanwhile, special or interesting or impressive designs are kept secret, with occational rumors/info spread to pique interest. I like the way this aspect of the FIRST community operates, and I cannot think of a better way.

Re: Design Sharing
 

They were in accordance with the rules before they shared their design online. That is the reason I wouldn't share my design because I do not want FIRST inventing a rule against what I worked six weeks on.....I don't know if anything would have been better, but I know it is motivation enough not to share my design early.

Re: Design Sharing
 

your teams design SHOULD be the result of your game analysis, your strategy for playing, and it will depend on your teams resources and manufacturing capacity

so by the time you have a 'design' to share, I cant imagine another team stopping what they were doing and copying your design instead

besides, why is your teams design more correct, competitive.... than mine? why would I throw away all the work my team has done so far (we would be in the 3rd or 4th week by this time) and start working like mad to copy what you did?

so I guess sharing would be a good thing in general. If you came up with some killer function or mechanism, you might want to keep that under wraps - esp if it could be easily added to someone elses machine

keep in mind that once you attend a regional, everyone will see your bot. If there is something clever you did, then they CAN copy that feature and fabricate it at their next regional, or at the championship - as long as you dont fabricate the parts back home and bring them with you, you are allowed to modify your bot AT the event site.

I lean towards sharing knowledge - knowlege is power and time is money... so be generous with what you have

thats what they told me in kindergarden, sharing is good! :c)

Re: Design Sharing
 

this is interesting - I had not heard about this - can someone explain what happened in more detail please?

FIRST always changes the rules during the six week build period. Why? because FIRST is emulating what its like to be an engineer, and thats what happens on real engineeing projects - you get halfway done and the customer says "thats not what I wanted" or "Ive changed my mind"

is it possible the rule change was a co-incidence with their design being published?

anyone know the rest of the story?

Re: Design Sharing
 

Inventing a rule? Are you sure that's what happened? As far as I can tell, the device on team 68's robot was taken off because it didn't agree with a rule that was already established since the beginning of the season. They weren't told to take them off because they showed their photo online, that just made it sooner that FIRST found out about it.

If your robot doesn't follow the rules, then it doesn't matter if you show your pictures online before the inspections begin. If it does, then you have nothing to worry about. It benefit FIRST nothing to intentionally invent rules during competition time to disqualify team's creative designs. After all, they try get teams to think creatively and stretch their imagination, as long as they follow the rules.

Having said that, I do agree FIRST have to be more consistent with their ruling and their actual rules. But for the past 5 years, the rulings at Silicon Valley Regional has ALWAYS been fair, and I am proud to be a part of the regional.

But I think this is going off topic... Sorry Matt.

Re: Design Sharing
 

you sure about that Ken? I remember a team update coming out not more than a week later ruling against the device they had....maybe im incorrect, but ill see if I cannot find it again....

[edit] Well on further review here is the thread that discussed it http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...k+Town+Thunder and Ken you obviously thought it was illegal to begin with, but others disagreed and said nothing was illegal. Either way FIRST reevaluated the rule to outlaw their specific case. They shared their design online causing a controversey, and got burned in the end....either way you look @ it this was reason enough for myself and others not to share their designs....personally I didn't see it as being in violation to begin with, but FIRST sounded off otherwise.[/edit]

The thread is there discussing it, you can review it for yourself and make your own opinions, but I am done with this topic.

Re: Design Sharing
 

When they first posted their design, it was unclear if it followed the rules or not. There was a big discussion here.

A bit later(after the ship date), in the final team update, FIRST clarified the rule such that their design was illegal. Personally I think they would have declared it illegal at a regional even if the design and ensuing team update weren’t posted, and thus the team update was good because it gave 68 time to think up ways to modify the design.

Re: Design Sharing
 

Agree. Thank you for taking your time to respond. Let's hope FIRST will be much better at rules clarification this coming season. I think that's something we both want :-).

Re: Design Sharing
 

The coolest part of the competition for me is seeing some robot do something crazy and then going to their pit to find out what the heck that was! I suppose I would only lose this thrill if I went online and viewed posted information on other bots.

However, I am torn on this pointy subject as well. Last year on 1020 a few members were veterans from teams that were strictly confidential during the build period (71 for instance). The idea that our design needed to be protected infected almost everyone else - despite the obvious lack of need to protect our design (even if non-rookies - who was seriously going to look to us for ideas?). It was no big deal, however it caught me off guard and I thought it was a bad thing for the rookies on the team because it gave them a sense of contempt (is that the right word?) for other teams. It wasn't a horrible thing, but you get my point.

Re: Design Sharing
 

I just took a look at what team 68 had constructed last year. It was most impressive. Kudos to TT.

I believe that if a team constructs such an awesome monstrosity that is not clearly against the rules, there should be some sort of appeals process to allow such designs to be permitted. Many teams would have loved to block the entire field last year, but how many tried? I think that there might be some merit to a general FIRST-wide vote on such an issue.

I would loved to have the chance to go up against something like that. How would one fight it? I think one could try to go under the arms (if there was room) or to try and force TT out of that position by creating some sort of stacking havoc. It is just like a wall in Jezzball, that good old game.

On the other hand, a general FIRST-wide vote might not fit the ideas of FIRST very well. We would start down the path of lawyers and such. The idea of questioning the rules of FIRST is like questioning referees in sports. There is some validity in some cases, but on the whole such a thing would most likely hurt an organization.

Can anyone think of a way to implement an appeals process for something like this without creating a burecratic machine?