Musings on Design Inspiration

[Andy Grady]

Originally Posted by Tom Ore

As soon as they see the exceptional minibot made by another team they can study it, understand why it works, they can go back through their build season and figure out what in their thought process caused them to miss the obvious, elegant solution. If they build it, they can see firsthand how it works and begin to understand the tradeoffs within that design. In this respect, there is learning benefit to "copying" a great design.

I think this is a fantastic point. Midseason redesign is nothing new to this competition. Since 1995 (the first time there was a regional and championship competition in a season) teams have made adjustments, often based off of what they see at a regional, in order to climb back into the race for the second chance at winning. Minibots make it much easier to copy a design and incorporate its strategy at a future competition, but I would hazard a guess that just about every team who does it has went through the painstaking learning process the first time around. They will continue to learn the lesson by building the clone and seeing what they did wrong the first time around. To be honest, I completely expect to see tons of 1.5 minibot clones at championships, and I say thank god! This game was too heavily weighted towards the minibot race from the get-go. From the standpoint of a spectator, I like the prospect of seeing more speedy minibots to make the races more interesting. The more minibots that go up the towers, the more the competition is geared towards skill in autonomous and basic scoring. With so many clones, I would imagine the focus on the minibot race will shift more towards deployment...an aspect which I think most people will say the true challenge lies in that portion of the game.

[JesseK]

John, imagine a scenario:

You're President of a business you started years ago. You've worked months on a proposal in competition with other companies for a complex job. You show up to ask questions about submissions in a public forum where (through logical interpretations of even the cleverest wordsmithing) you've discerned some details of your competitors' submissions. However, all it revealed was that your approach to the problem was completely inadequate. What do you do?

Given the chance for improvements, I doubt you'd stay the course. After all, the morale of your employees and reputation of your company is at stake. Sure, I would be quite offended if I had a novel [insert FRC design here] mechanism that was cloned in the same season by a team I may later face; yet being a mentor you too can learn a significant lesson from this.

The rest of this is an anecdote that's merely here to say that I think there's a fine line between believing a team 'simply created a clone' versus the team 'changing course in some core aspects of the design'. When I say "you" I mean the generalized team who has a 1.5s minibot using DD shafts that weighs next to nothing.

Do you expect credit for the entire minibot, certain aspects of the minibot, what? I wasn't 'inspired' by any of the minibots seen here on CD or in web casts; I was simply proven to have made a wrong decision along the way. We visited the idea of direct-drive minibots briefly early in the season, yet shied away from it because we had to make a decision (due to scheduling and snow) before we were able to test all options. The test would have been to see whether or not the drive shaft could have made it through constant shocks while being only cantilevered. So instead we went with a more conservative, modified-gearbox design. It's heavier overall (4.0 lbs) yet has many aspects that are similar to minibots seen in videos and even the "one-day minibot" posted on CD.

If anything, these latest designs will have us revisit the minibot design after DC should we make it to Championships in order to iterate through the direct-drive options. But to say we "cloned the powerhouse teams" would be to completely discredit us, and everything we figured out on our own other than direct-drive shafts and their placement. These things include magnet placement, center of gravity placement, secure attachment to the deployment mechanisms for match play, quick releasing for deployment, etc. This specific anecdote is almost as bad as someone saying a powerhouse team is "mostly mentor built" -- it's simply not factual to paint such a broad stroke.

[PAR_WIG1350]

I'd be careful here, don't be quick to judge. I walked into a meeting one day and saw my team was testing a component that looked almost exactly like one I had seen in a youtube video. When I mentioned it, I got confused looks from everybody. They hadn't seen it and had developed the same component independently without knowing it had already been done. Just because it looks copied, doesn't mean that it is.

[boomergeek]

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.

[artdutra04]

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

Originally Posted by artdutra04

And as a result of this update forcing all Minibots to be propelled exactly the same (good bye innovative ideas and inspiration, hello clone bots), I expect ~90% of Minibot teams to reach the trigger within 0.25 sec of each other. Now the Minibot bonuses will literally be decided each match by statistical luck more than anything else.

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.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

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.

Interesting insight.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by boomergeek

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.

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.

If you're a team who benefits from someone else's design I urge you to:
1. Credit them. Let everyone know who you were inspired by.
2. Pay it forward. Don't be a leech. Do some R&D of your own, and share your results with the community so others can benefit from your effort.

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.

[boomergeek]

You and I read different things about what John said.

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.
"One other thing...
If you're a team who benefits from someone else's design I urge you to:
1. Credit them. Let everyone know who you were inspired by.
2. Pay it forward. Don't be a leech. Do some R&D of your own, and share your results with the community so others can benefit from your effort."


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.

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.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by boomergeek

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.

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.

[MrForbes]

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.

[boomergeek]

Originally Posted by EricH

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.

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?

[Adam Freeman]

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!

[Wayne TenBrink]

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.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by boomergeek

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.

Hi boomergeek,
Mea Culpa. I'm human. I'm flawed (deeply). I make many mistakes. I have feelings that I have trouble reconciling with the way I really FEEL on the whole.

My intent with many of my writings has been to showcase the "whole" JVN, my thought processes, my feelings, my flaws in the interest of stimulating discussion.

I dislike your comments regarding the "whole" which target specific pieces of my writings (out of context). Yes, the bad parts of me are bad. My negative feelings are negative. I would have hoped people would read the entire post and put it in the context of the post as a whole and in the context of my actions before judging me. I will work better to communicate my intent in the future, or just skip the bad stuff.

I also don't appreciate your "grow up kid" attitude (my words, not yours). This isn't my first rodeo. I'm sure when I'm older I will be wiser, but that doesn't mean my thoughts aren't valid today.

Yes, I'm Director of Product Development for VEX Robotics.
Yes, many of the people on this forum are my customers. Yes, you're correct, I should never as an official of VEX Robotics speak negatively about any of my customers. However... I thought I was wearing my Robowrangler hat today. I thought I was speaking as a participant of the robotics community, as a former student, and active mentor. I guess there isn't a good way for me to leave my title at the door and still participate here.

You've called me out on it twice now for this, and I've got to say that you're the first person who has commented on it. There was a long period of time I didn't post on these forums for specifically this reason. There are many others who don't post for this reason. I always hope that this is a place where we can all wear our "team hats" and discuss the issues that matter to us. I hope that perhaps others in similar situations would don their team hats and come back here in the interest of common discourse. Perhaps that hope is naive.

Ohh... I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this discussion. I always love seeing other viewpoints. However in my opinion your tone leaves something to be desired (perhaps you meant it in response to my "tone", but I re-read my post and can't figure out what part of it justified this response).

-John

[Dmentor]

Originally Posted by JVN

I always hope that this is a place where we can all wear our "team hats" and discuss the issues that matter to us. I hope that perhaps others in similar situations would don their team hats and come back here in the interest of common discourse. Perhaps that hope is naive.

I really hope that feedback here does not dissuade you from continuing to participate. While I don't have a substantial presence here I do enjoy reading your blogs and posts and have no trouble distinguishing between your team position and your work position. Your writing is typically very thought provoking and causes me to analyze my own methods and biases. We all need those invitations to think deeper about things. Even though I don't know you personally, I've garnered a lot of inspiration from your published thoughts and your team's designs. This particularly helps a lot this time of year when I'm feeling burnt out.

We are all seeking for simplicity on the other side of complexity. So regardless of the complexity inherent in the engineering challenge, the size of the simple and hence elegant solution set will likely be small. Prevalence of a particular design will then most likely be inversely proportional to the implementation difficulty. When the game design focus narrows to a small set of objectives then we will see convergence on simple easily implemented solutions as we iteratively improve through competition.

One way of counterbalancing this phenomena is to expand the scope of game objectives. Instead of one or two objectives achievable by a single robot have a multitude of objectives including those requiring multiple robots in order to achieve. Unfortunately this is often at odds with the desire to have a audience friendly competition. I think this balance between game objectives and observability is a difficult one.

One last thought for now... In prior games, it seemed like the game design accommodated both excellent robot design as well as strategy. As robots converge on physics limited performance, the differences between alliance should therefore be resolved via strategy. However given the scoring distribution, it seems likely that difference between alliances may be determined by luck which is very unsatisfying.