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Apparenltly they learned how to make it work a lot better during a competition, than we could....

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In our case, it certainly struck our team as a bigtime compliment, and proved to us that we had learned a lot.

I find that the two areas of design; Having the "Big Idea," and little engineering-ish things to optimise the "Big Idea," are learned in two different ways. You get better at coming up with general concepts the more you see general concepts. I have NEVER had a good idea that wasn't many, many other ideas put together, and usually not all of them were mine originally. And the more ideas you know about, the more likely you are to mix and match them into something great.

The "Fine Engineering" is learned best from doing it. And taking a general concept, with a clear bar set to match or exceed, is great. As I said earlier, there would be a problem with a team simply working from CAD drawings done by another team, but if they have to figure out how the team did it themselves, sometimes being wrong, and sometimes coming up with ways to improve upon it, then this is great experience. I don't think anyone has ever posted enough pictures of a robot that a team could realistically just blindly re-create another robot, part for part.



One other thing to consider: When you get down to it, there had to have been a SINGLE PERSON on 546 who said: "Hey, lets do it this way!" How is another team going "Hey, that sounds great" different than the rest of 546's members saying the same thing, if you are working to inspire the community, rather than just your team? (Especially if, as TheOtherGuy says below, the other teams go "Sounds great, but we could change X, Y, and Z and make it even better!")

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Students and mentors see these things differently, as a rule. I've been at this for five seasons now, and I can honestly say that I rarely see a robot approach that wasn't considered and discussed during game analysis and prototyping. I had a terrific experience at the Vancouver VRC tournament yesterday, where one robot went 6-0 in Qualifications, followed by at least 11 robots with 4-2 records.

I had a chance to closely study VRC 721, which was the 6-0 bot and the winner of the tournaments "Excellence" award. The special thing about their robot is that there was nothing special about it. It was a good, solid, state-of-the-art Vex robot with clean engineering and smart features, but any team could have built it, and it looked more-or-less like 20 other robots at the competition. What set them apart was driving and execution. The details on their robot were clean and well-done, and their driving was flawless all day. They had a perfect strategy, and drove it just right. Seeing their robot and copying would not have resulted in a champion, but emulating their teamwork and strategy might.

Most of the time when a team thinks they have some cool engineering feature or unbeatable robot, they are wrong. When they have a good robot and a perfectly complementary strategy, they are far more likely to win. I sometimes think the best predictor of a successful robot is the number of practice matches the drive team got to run on a full field before the tournament.

For what it's worth, I think 721 won using a great early-season strategy. We think the winners at the world championship will look different and be following a different strategy. Given 721's record, I suspect they'll build that robot and be driving the new way. So will our teams. :)

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That's almost exactly how it went down ;) . And it wasn't just that one person who came up with every fine detail of the design as shown to the rest of the FTC community. The general idea was changed many times before it worked up to our standards, and even then it could have been improved, as proven by every other design iteration. We're quite glad we showed our robot the way we did last year; it wasn't as easy as it sounds to copy even a general idea, and, quite honestly, we would have lost to every single robot that built on our design. It wasn't just "copied".

Teamwork should extend beyond your team. "Open sourcing" a design, as we call it, does just that (providing you don't give out detailed instructions on how to build it... I mean, let's be reasonable here :rolleyes: )

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I couldn't agree more. The robot built by 1771 last year was, IMHO, one of the most capable robots built in 2008 (it won the Delphi award at Peachtree, and the Xerox award at Championships) But, delays in construction meant that parts were still being bolted on the robot as it was being loaded up for shipment, so no practice, no time to debug (except between matches) and no time for the software team to write any kind of autonomous. So, even though it had some very cool features, and was real crowd pleaser, it didn't end up with the stellar record it could have.

If someone had seen pictures early on, and had taken the idea, fleshed it out, and made a killer, I think most of the team would have been flattered and pleased to see the idea pan out. 90% of innovation is inspiration.

Isaac Newton, quoting an obscure Frenchman, likened progress to "dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants." I don't know about anyone else, but I would be proud to be part of that stack of dwarves and giants. Heck, this whole thing is just too much fun to worry about someone stealing an idea, I just hope they learn and have a blast doing it!

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Exactly....

Great post Rick!

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Yeah, it stinks when that happens, but there's a huge difference between copying someone's design and improving upon it.

Case in point: Last year, we did a fairly good job at the San Diego FTC tournament and in the process went head-to-head with another purely defensive bot. When we faced that team again in Las Vegas, they had taken elements of our design and used them to redesign their robot into a goal-trapping beast. They ended up beating us in the final match.

Was my team mad or frustrated? No. We thought it was an honor that someone had thought our design and strategy, so different from most of the other robots, was worth copying and improving on.

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Here's another way to think about it: By reducing the number of photos available of robots, you're increasing the cost of those photos: in order for a team to acquire photos, they have to physically attend FTC competitions with a camera. This only benefits that other FIRST bogeyman: the 'rich teams'. As it stands now, a well-funded team could send a scout to every FTC competition in their region and copy the best. There's nothing stopping them, they are public events. Meanwhile, all the other teams would have to work with the smaller pool of robots they've had exposure to.

If we assume that copying is going to happen, why not make it more accessible to everyone by posting pictures and video online? A huge part of engineering is doing competitive analysis and trying to integrate the best features of your opponents product and processes into your own. Carmakers spend huge sums of money tearing apart their competitors' products to figure out ways to make their own vehicles and manufacturing processes better.

Personally, I'd support something the complete opposite of this thread's request: every team having to have 2-3 photos taken of their robot at a competition by a neutral photographer and posted on FIRST's website. Not enough to allow for full-scale copying, but enough to give away the 'general idea'. This would allow any team to freely adapt ideas into their own robot. If, by the end of the season, all the robots are similar, then the winners will be those who really pay attention to detail and squeeze the last iota of performance out of their robot.

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I think I ask for photos and videos the most. And my main reason is because I am an extremely visual person. Telling me that team 712 or whatever won, means nothing to me. I like to see the team/robot that won. That way I have a visual orientation.

I guess Bongle has a good point. If you have people at regionals stealing your ideas, why not even out the field and post the pictures to everyone...I guess.

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While I agree that 177's robot was simply amazing at the event, the fact is evident that 177 would rather be competitive than sharing anything, even in person. The should just know that next year, they'll have to face something similar from someone else. The rest of us know to never underestimate them.

2 unique ideas on 177's bot, and major props to them for both:
1.) A net that was really a thinking outside the box type of creation. Either there will be a limit on the allowable amount of rope next year or you will see alot more teams with nets in future competitions.
2.) A unique shoulder joint that not only actuated the shoulder but also actuated the elbow joint using the precise and exact gearing necessary to move the wrist the right amount for the given shoulder rotation distance. This is commonly seen in industrial applications but seldom created in younger robotics competitions due to the complexity required in getting the necessary precision movements.

Other unique ideas that were seen that may be applicable to FRC bots as well:
- Use spacers that extend out from the base of the robot to the wall such that when the spacers hit the wall, the robot's manipulator is at the precise distance needed to knock the pucks from the rack (credit to FTC 126 and a couple of others -- 126 was best at it though)
- Use a vertical 4-bar linkage to shift a bucket of pucks from the back of the bot to the front of the bot using 4 servos in one swift, simple movement without losing stability. (credit to one of the Oakton teams, FRC 623)
- Use servos to steer 2 caster wheels on the front of the bot, automobile style. I'm not sure how the drive motors were programmed, but it was evident that the team used their 2 drive train motors to the fullest. (credit to FTC/FRC 1086)
- Use an encoder on the shoulder joint and an algorithm that keeps the bucket of pucks vertical no matter where the shoulder joint rotates to (Credit to FTC 354/FRC 1885).
- It didn't really matter whether the bot went 1 foot per second (like FTC 177) or 3 feet per second (like FTC 392). If it could score effectively in autonomous you won vs defensive robots every time. This seems to be a common theme in all FIRST competitions.

Overall I was very impressed with the robots that were there.

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If someone does not want photos posted of their robot, why not simply respect their wishes?

Whether you agree with the fact that they don't want photos posted or not, does not change the fact that they simply do not want photos posted. If you would like to post photos of your own team's robot, knock yourself out, but before posting photos of other teams robots, you must be aware that they may not want this.

We’ve made it no secret that VRC 1114 does not want photos posted for many of the same reasons as FTC 177, and 3165. There have been several threads before discussing this.

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Our team entered FTC for the first time this season. We have two teams.

I've never seen an FVC/FTC competition in person and have almost no idea of what to expect at our event next weekend. Our teams are, I think, behind schedule but they, too, have absolutely no frame of reference against which to compare progress.

I've searched around for a bit, but because the infrastructure surrounding FTC is so fractured, it's been difficult to find pictures or videos of events or robots that will help me to gain perspective.

As soon as our robots are completed -- if they're ever completed -- I'll post pictures here. They may not be Championship-worthy material, but maybe feedback will help the kids to see where they can make improvements in the future, should we compete again.

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Glad to see the great discussion. I hope we can keep it up.





JesseK and any others,
If we did not share or help you or your team, I truly apologize. Our goal is to help every team we can. That is what FTC 177 Twisted Bots wants to be known for. I tried to edit my first post but it must be too late. I don't want anyone to think we don't want to help their team. We loaned out a lot of hardware and helped multiple teams with programming as much as possible. The only teams that I know we failed at helping were teams that programmed in RobotC, since we used LabView.

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I'm disappointed by every request to avoid posting pictures of the machines teams build.

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I have to say that, in person, the twisted bot teams were VERY inspiring. Did you know that both auto modes were programmed by middle school students? They were gave us the key to programing an auto mode this year. The robot was good, don't get me wrong, but it was the team that made them great.