pic: One-day Minibot

[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....

[Travis Covington]

We're happy to share our design philosophy, design decisions, and the processes we used to get to our current solution. We do hesitate, however, to post detailed pictures and designs of things during the current season to both ensure learning takes place, but also to maintain a competitive advantage. Ask any team and they'll tell you we're the first to explain all about our robot design and any details about it.

The bottom-line is that we're happy to give you the tools you need to build a successful mini-bot, but prefer doing so in a way that further enables you later. We must also not forget that this is a competition. The unfortunate thing about this year is that the simplest mini-bots will be the most successful (and the easiest to copy). When a significant majority of some of the early regionals could have been won with a single first place mini-bot, their importance cannot be over emphasized. Copying, sharing, posting pictures or detailed CAD of other teams robots without their consent is neither inspiring nor should it be considered GP.

While our issues here are not really that big of a deal, the benefits and takeaways from this thread could have been achieved through a different and more discrete means.

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by Travis Covington

...We do hesitate, however, to post detailed pictures and designs of things during the current season to both ensure learning takes place...

Studying and understanding successful designs is an excellent way to learn. The students who spent time on their own team's minibot will learn a great deal when they see a design that is much faster than they came up with. They will begin to understand where their thought process was limited and maybe will know a bit more about how to approach the next problem that comes along. The students on our team spent about half the build season working on versions of the minibot with the NXT Brick as part of the minibot! When we got to KC, our minibot was only a 2 second minibot. However, our deploy system works pretty well and we won KC with that 2 second minibot. (Information on our robot including deploy have been on our team's website since the end of the build season so if you're looking for deploy ideas feel free to go there.)

[Travis Covington]

I don't disagree with that, but do feel that an explanation of the reasoning behind design decisions will almost always result in a more thorough understanding of the solution than analysis alone can obtain.

[Steve_Alaniz]

xx

[Travis Covington]

The specific details of the interactions were not posted here, nor do they need to be.

I do not disagree with the spirit or intent of the post, and have a long history with Dave personally and did not intend to discredit his teaching or work. I said what I needed to say, and it seems that we are in agreement over a good majority of everything else. However, as far as simplicity and logic are concerned; the simplest solutions are sometimes the ones requiring the most iteration, refinement, and time. The designs that make you say "Why didn't I think of that?" are usually from the people who thought of everything else, designed it, built it, had it fail, and then iterated until they were successful. Logic and reasoning don't always translate into simplicity, even when keeping minimalism in mind.