pic: One-day Minibot

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Travis Covington

Did the teams who you drew inspiration from have any issue with you posting this?

Each of the teams listed has competed at least once already. Their minibot designs are "in the wild" (118's and 148's were featured in videos shortly after ship). I really don't see any reason why permission would need to be sought from any of these teams to post a picture of a minibot inspired by their designs.

[Travis Covington]

"In the wild" is up for interpretation. I know at least two of the teams mentioned aren't thrilled with this unveiling.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by Travis Covington

"In the wild" is up for interpretation. I know at least two of the teams mentioned aren't thrilled with this unveiling.

I could tell that by you asking the question. I find it somewhat bizarre that these teams think that there was any way that this minibot design was going to stay "under wraps".

This is not the first, or even the second place I have seen this design, it is the third. I have a picture of 1625's minibot from Wisconsin and I saw 2415's in person at Peachtree this weekend. Both the picture and in person looks gave me sufficient information to build a similar minibot without much trouble.

Judging by the post by Chris is Me, this minibot design is circulating around New England as well.

The nature of the minibot task is such that by Champs many minibots will be very similar. Instead of spending time posting about people copying it, your time may be better spent optimizing both minibot and deployer to get every last tenth you can. I don't like it either, haven't since kickoff, but that's just the way it is.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

Judging by the post by Chris is Me, this minibot design is circulating around New England as well.

Yessir it is. A couple of our teams have been collaboratively working on minibot design since the beginning of the season. Slowly but surely we all also came to the same conclusions in design as 254 etc.. (or at least we think we have because we're all running similar speed minibots).

Our group of teams would like to thank 1625 and Richard's post about the Tetrix motor specs for initial design inspiration. Anything after that has been under our own development and we have all accomplished 1-1.5 second minibots.

I'm surprised we're still seeing the "who inspired what" debates especially after sanddrag pretty much explained what most teams who came to this minibot design went through.

Thanks for your insight in your own design sanddrag! It is the very same engineering process we went through. The big issue we were having was the light switch we found (which thankfully Al said is legal! ).

Now onto making deployment faster

[Chris is me]

40, 177, 190, and 2791 all had variations of the direct drive minibot at WPI. 2791's design was a combination of at home engineering with some helpful tips from 816 to save us a few iterations.

Who knows how many teams will have them at later events? We certainly showed off our Revision B to a few dozen teams there.

We are using lessons learned at that regional with some "inspiration" from other teams to work on a further revision. We are not copying directly, just using others as a starting point.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Yessir it is. A couple of our teams have been collaboratively working on minibot design since the beginning of the season. Slowly but surely we all also came to the same conclusions in design as 254 etc.. (or at least we think we have because we're all running similar speed minibots).

Originally Posted by Chris is me

2791's design was a combination of at home engineering with some helpful tips from 816 to save us a few iterations.

Sometimes it seems that people forget that teams outside of the "Elite" tier often share information as well. We might not have the resources to reach the conclusions on our own, but after enough combined failures from the 5 or so teams involved, we seem to have something that works.

[James Tonthat]

Originally Posted by thefro526

Sometimes it seems that people forget that teams outside of the "Elite" tier often share information as well. We might not have the resources to reach the conclusions on our own, but after enough combined failures from the 5 or so teams involved, we seem to have something that works.

Our team got a lot of help from Dustin when he shared with us his backpack man design. We improved upon it, made a better clamp system, did some electronics voodoo magic and it helped win us a regional.

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by James Tonthat

We... did some electronics voodoo magic and it helped win us a regional.

I love electronics voodoo magic. It makes things work so much better!

[Steve_Alaniz]

xx

[1708xMr.Roboto]

Gracious Professionalism, that is all.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by 1708xMr.Roboto

Gracious Professionalism, that is all.

Is it unGP for a team to be upset by someone else publicly posting their design?

[548swimmer]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Is it unGP for a team to be upset by someone else publicly posting their design?

I think the issue is with someone else posting their design. If the team wanted their design revealed, they would have posted it themselves.

[1708xMr.Roboto]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Is it unGP for a team to be upset by someone else publicly posting their design?

If I understand correctly, this design was built by the original poster. As he mentioned it was inspired by a few other team's designs, but he gave them their credit as it was due. It may apprear to be the same, but it's not exactly the same, which makes it the Op's design.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Is it unGP for a team to be upset by someone else publicly posting their design?

I think he's suggesting it isn't gracious to essentially post another team's design..

Anyway, I think so many minibots at this point have such similar designs that he could have been inspired by quite a number of teams, some who wouldn't be upset at all. At this point, as someone mentioned, it's worth more to optimise than to express dissatisfaction with loose-lipped miniboteers.

[548swimmer]

Originally Posted by Basel A

I think he's suggesting it isn't gracious to essentially post another team's design..

Anyway, I think so many minibots at this point have such similar designs that he could have been inspired by quite a number of teams, some who wouldn't be upset at all. At this point, as someone mentioned, it's worth more to optimise than to express dissatisfaction with loose-lipped miniboteers.

Agreed! This design is "inspired" by our back-up minibot. Oh wait... we never used that minibot, or even brought it to a competition....