[archiver]

Posted by Joe Johnson at 2/4/2001 3:19 PM EST


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.


In Reply to: FIPN - FIRST Intellectual Property Network
Posted by Robby on 2/4/2001 3:04 AM EST:



When I was told to write up a "Delphi Award" proposal
after Delphi became and official sponsor of FIRST, I
proposed a written submission for a robot feature or
"best practice" that teams would submit in a standard
format that FIRST would publish on the web and in a
book form.

What I envisioned was something like what FIRST has
done with the Yearboob Page submissions. Everyone has
the same page format, font, picture sizes etc. At the
time,
FIRST was loath to deal with the hassles of collecting
everyone's submissions and publishing them.

Now that they have worked out the bugs by doing
essentially the same thing for the Yearbook Page, maybe
they would be interested in expanding it to allow teams
to submit an added page for robot feature or best
practice. If FIRST then published these pages it would
be a HUGE leap forward in helping to get teams up to
speed fast with robot design and build.

Think about it. If an award was given for the best
submissions (perhaps a winner and a number of
finalists), teams would have a self interest in
publishing their very best cool thing the have done.
In the same way that Patents put ideas in the public
domain, this process would "pay" teams (with the
currency of the realm -- recognition) for revealing
their best kept secrets. Then others would be able to
use them and even improve upon them.

What do you think?

Joe J.