Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

John,

I have to say that I disagree with you on this one. I appreciate your quest for "justice" as you called it, but I think your first part of your post contradicted and proved the second part wrong. You even said that the relatively new found openness and transparency has benefited the ENTIRE FRC community and has bumped up the level of competition several notches.

Now as far as this being unfair, I disagree. That's just life. Take the iphone for example. When it first came out it was absolutely revolutionary, but over time competitors came onto the market and now there are many Android powered phones that are (in my opinion) superior to the iphone.

The minibot is to FRC teams as the iphone is to Apple. It's true that teams like 148 put hours upon hours in R&D with their minibots, and yes it's true that other teams (COMETS Robotics included) are seriously looking at copying successful minibot designs, but it's also true that this "unfairness" makes this season an even more realistic engineering challenge.

If teams wanted to hide their minibots, then by all means do so! Have it covered up, put opaque shielding around it, and make sure no one sees it inbetween matches! Just don't have it in plain sight and expect to have people not be inspired by it (or copy it). To my, that's what's unfair.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

In our team's case, we had an average minibot, a great deployment and our alliance captains team decided to replace our average minibot with their faster minibot during Saturday lunch time-- the net result is that our minibot was able to beat theirs up the pole (due to deployment differences -- actually our average one beat theirs as well, when we had to revert back to it later in elims) I didn't see that as undermining our own work, because at that point, we were pursuing the best opportunity to win the competition (which we ALMOST did.)

John Vriezen
Team 2530 "Inconceivable"
Mentor, Drive Coach, Inspector

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Sorry John,

I think I have to agree with Grant on this one. When "copying" designs I think it is up to mentors to teach kids why something is being made. And to be honest, with something like the minibots this year, there's many teams who worked their way down to the "barebones" style minibot, as I like to call it, on their own. 1647 is one example of such case (only example I have because I worked with them as they iterated their minibot design). Many teams also willingly helped others such as Aren of 1625 and Dustin from 816.

I guess what I just want to add in is for everyone to not go ahead and assume that if a team's minibot resembles the basic designs of another that it is a copy. Minibots when optimized are pretty easy to "steal from the best" but IMHO very hard to fulfil the "invent the rest" part of the equation.

+$0.02

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Hmmmm.

A Director of Product Development for a major Robotics vendor admits he is being intentionally sarcastic and judgmental about some customers that he perceives are not following the rules the WAY he thinks they should be, not how the rules are actually written by FIRST.

He feels wronged.

I'd recommend swallowing some of that pride and looking at the big picture and get with the 21th century.

Open source is the FASTEST way to bootstrao use of technology and train legions to use technology. Does your team use any software that was provided free to you?

CD has seemingly become a place for a gripe session for all the powerhouse teams to tell everyone how unfair the world is and how we need to make FIRST more about making sure the powerhouses get every bit of accolades they feel entitled to.

If you haven't actually been in deep and thoughtful communication with any of the teams that you think is copying without the students learning about engineering, then your musing are NO better than the novice teams that think mentors do all the work on the powerhouses. Actually it's worse because with your resources, you should know better.

There is no place in FIRST for musing about negative perceptions that come from ignorance.- Not by powerhouses nor by novice teams.

Lighten up people.

If you think you know enough to feel justified being intentionally sarcastic to people that volunteer for FIRST (based on what you IMAGINE is going on for those people), it's time for you to leave your bad attitude at the door and start meditating on what the real purpose of FIRST is.

Maybe as you get older, you will recognize such things.

In the heat of the moment, I can be sarcastic myself but always on reflection, I always figure out I could have handled it a better way.

FIRST is not first about making sure powerhouses do not feel jilted.
FIRST is first about bootstrapping high schools across the whole world to encourage use STEM through the use of a fun tool: the competition.

There is no doubt in my mind that fabricating copies is typically a means of inspiration. It is typically a means of bootstrapping good engineering information. I think too many teams work too much on their own, spending huge amounts of time, without checks along the way. Some don't use physics and math, some don't have basic fabrication skills, some don't 'have anyone that knows the ins and out of FRC robots nor FRC competitions.

If you think you see a team that is missing one or more of the pieces, instead of being sarcastic and judgemental, the right response is to meekly offer help. It might take years- but I think that is what FIRST is supposed to be about. Now I might be wrong, this is only my 3rd year at FIRST but over half a century at life.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Back in the first week of the build season (on 11 Jan) I posted this in response to Team Update 1:

If there is anyone/thing to "blame" for all the cloned Minibots, it's the ultra-strict Minibot rules. After TU1, it was quite obvious what the most optimal solution would be, and that was a Minibot which eliminated as much mass and friction as possible. The more one worked at reducing weight (eliminate Tetrix structural parts and wheels) and reducing friction (good bye [several stages] of Tetrix gearbox), the more all designed converged to tiny, magnet-based, direct-driver screamers.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Wait, what? Where did you get this as a "JVN griping that he didn't get enough awards"? I read it and it said that he views doing the work as an admirable trait and that he doesn't think that blind copying without any interpretation is equally as admirable. He does mention that teams (not his specifically) who put in the work to develop effective solutions should be rewarded by winning. I fail to understand how that is saying that "powerhouses" should get more awards.

Besides, the teams the company works with have won 5 different regionals... already... I hear one of them just won a district last weekend too. Between them they have more regional victories, more Einstein appearances, more technical awards than any other grouping of 5 teams you can make up... one of them is a Hall of Fame team and one of them (the one John works with) is a Legacy team. These are all teams who are already respected, why would he complain they aren't getting what they are entitled to?

Oh Wait, they aren't. These are veteran teams who have been dumped on, booed, and, in at least one situation I am aware of, had their students harassed online (I am repulsed when I read what was said to that student). So, if they want to complain a little bit that they are being treated like crap I think we should sit back and at least evaluate whether they are right.

But, none of this is at all relevant to John's point of saying that he feels that teams copying minibots are missing out. Heck, read the last section.
Sounds to me like he is saying that copying is ok so long as you don't stop there. Sounds an awful lot like exactly what you are talking about to me.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

You and I read different things about what John said.

John said
"I don't like it when someone benefits from someone else's hard work.
This is related to my personal vision on "justice" and applies to all aspects of my life. I feel like if one team put in a lot of effort for an advantage, another team shouldn't be able to get this same advantage without working for it. It isn't FAIR, in my worldview. The team that put in the work should be able to reap the benefits. It would be very demoralizing if a team put in a lot of effort to come up with an advantage, then lost to another team who just copied them without any effort. But of course... life isn't fair, so maybe I should just suck it up and deal with this one."



Please explain how this description of "fairness" is not about accolades.

Racial/Ethnic/Gender slurs have no place in FIRST.
The Rules of FIRST identify guidelines on gracious professionalism.
It is deplorable that one team was booed. Does it deserve more postings on CD as compared to each and every team that died out in their first year or two? Where are the postings about them? The issue is" what is it that the people of FIRST should be focused on and talking about.

Sounds to me that he feels he might be entitled to sarcastically refer to some FIRST volunteers as leeches if they don't submit to his view of what a good approach to teaching students about STEM is. Maybe it is just a language problem: maybe "Don't be a leach" is not a judgmental put down in the communication circles John and you run in.

In the real world, many engineers are initially given test and fabrication jobs before they understand enough to do good R&D. There is a progression: working too much on your own without understanding the state of the art in your field is a BAD approach to engineering: because it is perceived as wasting too much time because it does not make use of valuable information.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Interesting insight.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

I manage to get a full and complete copy of your robot design, down to the tolerances. How doesn't really matter right now. I build that design, without doing any improvements or design work of my own.

Now I beat you in a match (just to make it more fun, it's FM3 at a regional). I didn't do any design work; I just used the design you published. I don't give you any credit. I simply took your design, whether you liked it or not.

How do you feel after that happens? How is that fair? You do all the work, and I get the win.

Let's try another tack. I see your design somehow (let's say a public demo, or maybe by the channel that I used in the previous example). I spot something you missed, let's say a weakness. I build a robot that is very similar in design, but has some differences that eliminate that weakness.

Now, I beat you in the same match. I've still taken your design, but I've improved it, capitalized on the weakness I spotted, done the engineering work.

How do you feel about it now? I did some re-evaluation of some of your design decisions, and I built your robot, only better. I get the win. Not only that, but at some point I've shared the weakness with you so you can counter it.

It's not about accolades. It's about doing the work and having the result turn out such that those that don't do the work don't win. It's like cheating on a test--those that do the work do well; those that copy the work do almost as well (missed a couple items maybe)--but in the long run, those that do the work actually do better because those that copied don't know what they're doing.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

We try to get the general design concept and ideas that we prototype out in the world early on in the season (youtube and CD and our own web page photo gallery and forum), we've done this since 2008. We have not seen any downside to it. The best part is that others are quick to point out problems they see, based on their experiences--we have many many man-years of experience reviewing our design for free! And if we happen inspire another team that's struggling to figure out how to do something, is that a bad thing?

We didn't publish any minibot info mainly because I wasn't working on it. Although we did post pics of our deployment mechanism when we finally got it figured out and built.

Our team is not in a position that we have to worry about competitive advantage. We are in a position where we can help other teams by showing them one way to solve some of the challenges they face. There are a lot of teams that can use all the help they can get...not for competitive advantage, but just to build a working robot. We want to help them.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Being a mentor on a team that has benefitted to the highest level (World Championships) from gaining inspiration from other teams designs in the same season (see below), it would be hypocritical of me to say that it is completely wrong to do.

Inspired design changes:
2009 - Teams like 148, 1114, and 254 released videos of their robots dumping huge amounts of balls. 111 and 1625 dominated the Midwest Regional with "power dumpers". We were struggling with how to funnel balls out of our robot. Based what we saw from other teams, we completely re-designed and rebuilt our robot during our 6 hr build window before our first competition.

2010 - 148 and 217 release videos that show them grabbing balls, spinning, and kicking them. We had just learned that our top roller only "grabber" was not functioning as well as we had planned. From the videos we could see how they were doing it, and added a lower bar to "pinch" the ball when we grabbed it.

2011 - 118 and 148 release videos of their minibots using direct drive motors. Our minibot team was struggling to get the reliability of their modified gearbox designed minibots figured out. They had already gone through (12) different iterations of designs to this point. We were already discussing building a direct drive minibot, but wanted a fall back version that functioned before we started another design. When that design proved to not be reliable, our mentors and students working on the HOSTBOT took over and designed a direct drive minibot similar to what was seen from 118. Technically what 118 provided was an inspirational concept. It took 2 iterations to get it to go up the pole without flipping off, another iteration to make it deployable, and now one more to optimize it for speed.

In these cases did we learn as we modified and adapted our designs to compete with teams at the highest level? Yes!

Our students learned that sometimes there is a better more elegant solution available. That they should always strive for continuous improvement. That their engineers do make mistakes, but work to find a better solution that actually works.

Our engineering mentors learned that our design process is not perfect (far from it). That we can learn from prototyping designs, testing, and iterating too functional solutions.

In all of these cases, I don't think we copied anyones design without doing any engineering of our own. Even the ball magnet required us to fully understand what and how 148/217 was doing it, before we could optimize our design and make it work.

There are at least 5 versions this year of the 4 bar "push link" arm design we used in 2007. In all the cases where we were acknowledged as inspiration for the design, it makes my day. Just knowing that other teams are looking at parts of robots that I helped design is exciting. Especially when it is teams that I really respect.

There is at least one copy of our current version of a minibot. I don't have an issue with them using the design, but I do wish the credit for the features that make this minibot design successful (the clamps) was given to the team that came up with the design.

I hope we have done a good job giving credit to the teams that have inspired us, in a proper time frame. Would we have come to these solutions on our own, probably, was it a huge time saver to see what actually works, then optimize it for our design....Definitely!

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Engineering is all about collaboration. No one designs bridges by themselves, no one has tried to redesign the missile, and naval carriers are all rather iterative.

The minibot, while it can be seen a nuisance in Logomotion, practically negating the tititular objective of making logos, is the true manifestation of engineering collaboration. Also, they seem to be hard to copy unknowingly, considering they are so small.

My team developed, in my somewhat objective-but-let's-be-honest-I'm-biased opinion, the greatest deployment system ever. However, all of our minibots failed to launch. At Chesapeake, the students from 88, 340, and 768 (borrowing a 340 minibot) offered to load a second minibot on our robot in collaborative matches to gain points in exchange for showing us how their design worked.

Though I know this is not what is commonly happening, this is perfect, symbiotic collaboration. I scratch your back, you scratch mine mindset. Now our team has put into construction a great minibot that we know will be successful at the VA regional. (barring peg entanglement)

***
I think this would be a good time to point out that FRC has evolved to contain different restrictions and allowances, but it has also created stratification of teams into "haves" and "have-nots." Teams that make it by on 7-10k/year don't have the opportunities to build multiple designs, practice bots, 1:1 scale fields, and the like. While teams that operate on this shoestring budget can be caught degrading the "haves" of FIRST, a lot of teams just try to win something, so they can show it to a prospective sponsor, so they can trully build a team.

Not everyone can be sponsored by IFI, but maybe they can learn from the teams that do and become better because of it.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

You have such a way of making me smile. :)

This falls into the sustainability reality. Regions and areas that are underdeveloped or in process of development - need teams that have the priorities that your team does. Not everyone understands or 'gets' that. We've been called a 'mentor team' by some of the teams in our area. I like that term. It says a lot in 2 words and your team would be considered a 'mentor team', if I understand these teams correctly.

It is always wise to recognize the source of inspiration,whether it be a robot design, a quote, a spirit idea that is awesome, a website design, a cool safety button, a business plan that is well done, a team philosophy/practice that you have learned about. It is always good to give credit where credit is due. In robotics competitions and in the real world.

It is also true that this game is just made to continually evolve throughout the weeks of competition season. Strategy, minibots, game play, alliance strengths and weaknesses - it's a fun game that hasn't topped out yet. And it is good practice to recognize the changes and who the teams are that are bringing the changes about and how or why. Document them/credit them in your team meetings and discussions and on your team websites and in chat discussions. Get used to acknowledging and documenting design ideas/inspiration/development and changes.

Jane

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

It is only natural to be unhappy when the right people don't get the proper credit for their work, but that's just how it goes, unfortunately. Can you name the chemist that developed the original version of the drug that you are taking in its generic form? We have to let our own historians figure out where the credit belongs.

I also wouldn't worry too much about students missing out on the design process because they "copied' something. They will just learn different lessons.

We gave away our first-generation minibot design to anybody that asked. Nobody who built one made it exactly the same way, and most are better than our original. They all learned along the way. We lent one out to a few teams at our competitions and one team will it take to their next competition. They figured out how to deploy it and they learned along the way. It will probably break at some point and then they will have to learn even more. If they hadn't gotten their hands on a "finished" product, their learning path would have been different or just skipped altogether.

We will press on with our next generation that borrows from stuff we saw last weekend (like from 67 and 2054), as well as stuff posted on CD (to the chagrine of many). Nothing we hadn't discussed before, but now we know that the concepts actually work so we will build versions of each and learn along the way (probably more than we want to). 67 and 2054, etc., will come up with someting better, and they will learn more along the way. That's the cool thing about minibots - they are so simple that every competition can be a whole new iteration of the design process. I don't expect many of the best minibots that ran last weekend to be around by St. Louis, unless their owners fall into the "good enough is the enemy of great" trap.

Some of our students (and probably yours) aren't particularly interested in the design process and won't be very involved. They won't learn as much as the ones who can't keep their hands out off the stuff.

I'm not sure there is much of a relationship between how much you beg, borrow, or "steal" ideas from others and what you learn. There is no free lunch and you won't be successful with what you have unless you learn something along the way.

Re: Musings on Design Inspiration
 

Why do you think its worth representing a behavior that you don't know whether it happens in FRC or not?
Is using such a representation any better than using the argument there could exist teams where only mentors touch the robot and students don't do any work?

The most likely place that a "clone" could occur would be a fledgling team that starts with a clone of some portion (if not all) of a sponsoring team's design. The fledging team typically learns a lot when they use a clone.
Just assembling a competitive bot and testing it the first year is a steep learning curve for many teams. But they don't end up in as many inefficient dead ends. If that fledgling team is sponsored by a powerhouse: is it appropriate to call them leeches? I don't think so, they are learning a lot. And much more efficiently than fledgling teams that try to do everything on their own without a good plan and without good engineering guidance.
Is the hard and inefficient way the best way to learn?

There are no rules in FIRST to prevent such a cloning approach.

So I think you are more likely concerned about copying without permission as opposed to copying with permission.

Or are you disgruntled by teams that are open source with good designs that others choose that they are only capable of copying in the first year?

I think it would be ludicrous to expect a team to want to compete year to year in FRC only to copy and never plan to do any engineering of their own.

Are you really worried that those teams exist and we should be concerned about them?

FIRST defines what cheating is- reusing someone else's design is not cheating according to the rules. It may be a patent violation if it is done without permission- but FIRST encourages everyone to share- but it also does not disparage teams for trying to keep secret sauce recipes.

The sequence of regional matches is INTENTIONALLY an iterative process in the redesign of robot mechanisms. The goal is not the most competitive robot after 6 weeks, but the most competitive robots in the championship. The world does not stand still for any team.

How many powerhouses redesigned their minibots AFTER seeing a direct drive minibot?

How many ended up with a minibot or minibot deployer design that looked very similar to a design they saw during the build season?

Is ending up with such a minibot design cheating if the team already designed a real slick LOGO lifter?

Is copying another human player's throwing technique without permission considered cheating?