Musings on Design Inspiration

[Duncan Macdonald]

I've been looking for somewhere to drop an essay and this thread was close.

The whole minibot thing has soured this year a little for me. My worst experience in six years or FIRST was at our first regional where we had brought 2 essentially identical minibots with us (one for us and a backup because our design is a little fragile). We decided before the regional that as long as we didn’t break our primary we would be willing to lend our backup to other teams until eliminations when we hoped to attach it to an alliance partner.

We lent the backup to two different teams at the competition and I couldn’t have more polar opinions of them.

The first was a team who due to geographical inconvenience (aka borders) weren’t able to build a minibot but had a solid looking deployment system with hopes someone would lend them a minibot. We loaned them our backup and “mini bot specialist” for the better part of the second day and third morning. Unfortunately they never were able to successfully deploy it on the field but after the regional they came to our pit and gave our student a box of chocolates as a token of appreciation. That team was a class act.

The second team saw us practice deploying our minibot on the practice field and one of their mentors came over to our student and asked about our minibot. After the student explained the mentor then asked something along the lines of “How much would you sell it to me for?”* The student, who appeared a little distraught, then came over to me and explained what happened. I brushed it off as a failed attempt at a joke and that maybe they would be interested in attempting to deploy our minibot since they were interested. He did. When he came back he said “I left the minibot with them to see if they could make it work and when I came back they were measuring the shafts with a caliper. Then when I told them the other team wanted to try deploying it again the mentor offered to buy it again.”* I told the student not to work with that team anymore and if the mentor asks again, tell him that it will cost him $8000 (approximately the cost for us to get to St Louis). To my knowledge he wasn’t asked again. I would still like to think it has a joke but I have serious doubts.

*Second hand from the student involved.

My opinion with the direct copying thing is that I don’t care for it but it isn't my greatest concern. I’ve decided that in general the team that copies doesn’t come close to being as effective as the “original”. If they do, it is because the original is not trying to continually improve their design, which is just as bad. (As Arthur stated, with the restrictions on minibots this year there is a very reachable performance ceiling and the issue is worse than normal.)

My thoughts on this particular event are:
- Bothered that the student was put in this situation
- Humored that I know they will have design issues
- Not really an issue competitively for us

- We won’t compete against them again
- If we had we’ve since improved our overall design and deployment and still will be faster anyways

-I hope their next event is webcasted. I want to know if it works after all

[EricH]

Boomergeek, I was taking the "copying" to an extreme. As in, I get copies of all your design drawings and all that sort of thing, and build an identical robot, without your permission/knowledge. Building twins without building twins, if you will.

BTW, John was not calling copiers leeches. He was calling copiers who do not learn from the experience of copying/improving/iterating and then pass that knowledge on leeches. There is a difference.

I don't exactly care about whether the copying is with or without permission in FRC--but there should really be some learning to go with it, and some modification based on that learning.

My problem is not with seeing a design and adapting it to fit a current design that someone already has (you still have to do the engineering). My problem is with someone seeing a design and making an exact copy, and not learning why it works the way it works, or what the physics behind it say.

Derive and iterate, instead of copy, is the way to learn. (Unless, of course, you're doing collaboration--which simply means that you're doing a couple extra copies of one particular design, with full participation in the designing by both teams. That brings its own set of problems.)

[JVN]

Originally Posted by JVN

I put my musings on design inspiration here:
I hope others will take the time to digest their feelings on this sort of thing, reflect, and share them with the community.

More food for thought...
-John

Hi Everyone,
I posted my thought process on this, but I don't think there is anything in my writings as a whole to agree or disagree with. There are literally contradictions in my writings just like there are contradictions in my feelings on the matter.

I don't like seeing "I agree with John" or "I disagree with John" because... I don't know HOW I feel. You'll note that 148 is one of the biggest posters of our designs, and I've been one of the biggest proponents for "raising the level of competition" by sharing what we do. So I hope if anything you'll let our actions speak...

However, I'm curious what others think and feel. I dislike absolutes. I know there are others out there like me who are conflicted about certain aspects of this, and I would love to see them put these feelings into words, to hopefully help me put my feelings into better perspective.

Please continue the discussion!
-John

[Akash Rastogi]

What I disagreed with is calling it 'copying' because I don't see minibot similarity the same as the extreme EricH described (because let's be honest, that extreme really isn't even possible).

I really really like how Art put it though, a lot of people reached the optimization ceiling. I like to give people with clones the benefit of the doubt though and hope that they did take the time out to analyze a design and make it better (if possible), but that might just be me.

[Daniel Brim]

As the design lead for the elevator system and the roller claw system on our robot this year, I figured I'd put in my two cents. Especially since both systems are very heavily "inspired" by other past (and even current) designs.

As I posted in the photo this year, our elevator system is very heavily inspired by 254/968 in 2007. I wouldn't call it a clone by any means, but the fact remains that the initial round of design still belongs to them.

That said, I do think that a lot of valuable design work and process was exposed to myself and our students when designing the system. A lot of the design depended on our team's resources, which are different than 254/968's. We can't exactly machine pulley mounts from aluminum billets on this team. We also made sure that the design was updated to suit this year's game.

When we design iterations on other's systems, I actually prefer not to look at their CAD. This is personal preference, but I feel like it's pretty easy to fall into the trap of designing for the wrong goals and the wrong game that way.

Our roller claw this year was designed and fabricated between ship and our competition last weekend. And yeah, I'll admit that certain inspirations are taken from designs for this year's game. For example, we implemented our own spin on 148's backstop idea, and it worked brilliantly in competition.

Doing a design post-ship wasn't exactly easy though. The way the elevator was set up made it pretty difficult to integrate the two systems together. It's still a valuable experience for the entire design team to work through a systems integration problem like the one we had with our claw. Our claw wasn't a direct copy of anybody's though, and I'm proud to say that.

Now that we have competed for the first time this year, there are a few things that we've learned about our design as a team. If we had just carbon copied another design, the learning process would become completely different. This way, we learn from our own mistakes, not from other's.

[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

[robodude03]

Ok I am going to jump in on this and state that I neither disagree or agree with what JVN has posted. Points have been made that support both sides. As mentioned by others, this has happened in the past couple of years. Making adjustments to the robot between competitions is within the rules, but at the same time what are students gaining? However, lets think of the real world for just a moment.

Aren't patents being infringed upon every day? Whether or not it is right, this is what is happening in the world. "Companies" are making money "copying" the successes of others. Companies fiercely defend their products, but does that stop the copying? I don't believe it does. This is the type of competition that many companies are facing today and it is a fact that many have to deal with. Obviously our rules don't apply abroad and it is much tougher to deal with. How do the "origin" companies survive? They continue to stay ahead of the curve with their innovative designs. The results? Other companies follow their lead and build upon the design, or at least try to.

Do FIRST teams go back to a method of secrecy? I don't believe that is in the best interest of all teams, but at the same time "copying" continues to go on. I am in the same place as JVN, I don't know how I feel about the copying, but I believe this is a reality that many of us need to face. Copying has and is happening in FRC and I believe that each team will react to it differently.

Obviously we want all teams to succeed, but to what extent do we balance reality with the educational opportunities students gain from this program? Unfortunately I don't have the answer, but I hope as a community we will be able to come to an understanding.

[Kris Verdeyen]

We had a fast, non-magnetic minibot that we showed everyone in the video right after ship.

We couldn't deploy it reliably.

We saw what 148 and 1429 did at Alamo, and said, "huh, so that's how you do it..." and set off to make one better than those.

FIRST has changed, John, you're right.

Check out this golden oldie from 2002: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1608

A similar discussion, but instead of designs, we were arguing about whether STRATEGIES ought to be made public and copied. As in, "My team's robot will score a lot of tubes, then run back and deploy a minibot". That kind of strategy.

Anyway, if you want a secret, keep a secret. If you want to be flattered, show everyone your robot, and see if they copy it; but don't get your feelings hurt when they do - that was the point all along.

[Mark Sheridan]

John,
I have to admit that our team is copying your genius arm potentiometer design.
http://blog.iamjvn.com/2011/03/insid...ntiometer.html

Our potentiometer mounts keeps breaking (we broke our fifth version). Without it we cannot test our autonomous program. Our students have worked hard on the programming, thus I am willing to copy a design to give them a chance next regional to express their own unique ideas.

We are defiantly going to try copying a powerhouse design. I prefer to say reverse-engineer, because we are putting the extra effort to figure out why it works and how we can improve it. We have had a physics model running since the beginning the season. We have been using it to verify the speeds teams have been posting all season long. Its how we concluded that teams must have been removing parts from the tetrix gearbox, improving its efficiency or removing it completely. We opted to try to boost gearbox efficacy by lubricating and breaking in the gearbox but had little success. Upon seeing the 148 video, we knew we had to try direct drive. Your video also eliminated much of the unknown about durability of the tetrix motor.

Presently, we have determined a range of shaft diameters and tested a few possible tread material for durability. Our goal is to set up our minibot to have several interchangeable shafts and magnets, so that we can tinker with these variables. I mention all this because I feel our approach to the minibot will be reverse engineering because of the amount of testing and research we will undertake. The potentiometer design we are going to use is defiantly being copied because of the lack development.

In the real world, there is a lot of reverse engineering. It's an important skill for engineers to learn because everyone does it. I have not encountered a company that does not do it. Every car manufacture does it. It can get pretty grim at times (look up the B-29's that had to land in russia during World War II) but to me its an excepted part of life and gives a company an incredible competitive edge over others who don't. I actually met a micro chip designer who puts dummy traces in his circuits to throw off competitors. It also helps to have a good patent too, I have already read a few poorly written patents that the companies found out the hard way they can't use them to protect their own ideas.

I guess what I am try to say is that reverse engineering is okay. If you just copy without much thought, you are really missing the point. I don't like copying but some cases, like the potentiometer where i have limited time and unlimited vex parts in my closet, are needed to foster a creative solution elsewhere.

By the way John, you have to coolest blog ever! Its the most thought provoking, informative and useful blog I have ever read.

[Jon Jack]

1538 has no issues sharing designs or information about how and why we do things. We've released CAD models of prior robots, held presentations on our design process, strategies, etc. It's all in the spirit of teaching others and raising the level of competition.

However, I'm too am conflicted on the issue of borrowing minibot designs. But here's my thoughts on the issue.

We spent a lot of time optimizing our minibot by playing with ways of interfacing to the motors, roller sizes, traction material, magnet sizes, magnet spacing, switches, chassis - the list goes on. We have a box in our shop with about 10 different minibot chassis, different sized rollers, different types and sizes of switches. Not to mention the box full of magnets we've experimented with. We easily went through 20 different iterations on just our current minibot design, not to mention the countless concepts we created early on in build season. The bottom line is that we spent a lot of time developing a solution that would give us a competitive edge.

Is it realistic that the 'elite minibots' are going to stay hidden forever? Not really. We compete in public, lots of people are taking pictures, watching the webcast or archived match videos. But it doesn't seem right to just wait around and copy another team's minibot without doing much (or any) design work of their own and receive the same advantage as a team who did the work. To be honest, it's kind of disappointing and not very inspiring. What is your team learning by copying an 'elite minibot'?

There are teams that will arrive at similar designs, without copying another team's work. For example, our minibot is VERY similar to 254's, yet we never talked to each other about our minibots prior to the San Diego Regional. Both teams arrived at similar conclusions after doing lots of experimentation and optimization.

I have no problems with this, since both teams did the work and the students took something away from the process of designing an effective minibot.

[ThirteenOfTwo]

An open question: what about copying with permission?

Say, late in the season, a team approaches another team asking about carbon copying their minibot and deployer. The second team accepts in the spirit of cooperation, and they proceed. Is this acceptable?

Now let's change it up a little. What if the teams agreed to share minibot designs early in the season? Is it OK for the team without a minibot to ask to be allowed to carbon copy if their design falls through?

Does the team without a minibot have to reimburse the team with one in some way?

Say a team approaches you and asks if they can use your deployer as direct inspiration--say, they will take your design but change it to fit properly on their robot. Regardless of whether or not you accept, is their behavior out of line?

[Tristan Lall]

I wonder if the VRC experience—where intra-season copying is facilitated by the long timeframes and relatively simple mechanisms—is influencing John's opinion? I know it's been a struggle for many VRC teams to balance ongoing competitiveness with their natural desire to be open in the robotics community.

Naturally, this the existence of this practice and its side effects aren't lost on the VRC organizers.

[boomergeek]

John,

I was wrong to react so harshly.

What I should have first said was:

"John,
.
You are a great asset to the FIRST community and are deserving of great respect for all your contributions and efforts.

Thanks for be willing to put your thoughts down in an effort to have a dialog:
but there are a couple things that disturbed me when I read it.

You admit you were intentionally sarcastic with the intent of deriding the competition approach (perceived in your mental fabrication) of what other FIRST volunteers were using. While you admit you know you shouldn't, I did not read that you admit that you were wrong to use sarcasm and that you will try to react in a better way next time. Because I did not discern an apology, your writing (to me) comes off as a justification of the sarcasm. Maybe it is my misinterpretation of your writing style. Do you think your writing included an apology for the sarcasm and a promise not to attempt to do it again?

Second, you end your essay with the phrase "Don't be a leech". Maybe it is an older brother syndrome of trying to tease younger siblings by name-calling ("You are a blank if you don't do what I say"). I view implied name-calling, no matter how well intended, is not in the spirit of FIRST. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive about derogatory name-calling: what do you think?

The first time I noticed your seemingly accusing sarcastic tone directed at a FIRST volunteer in a posting here, I assumed it must have come out unintentionally: I assumed I must have misunderstood you. To me, your current essay seemed to only be a reinforcement of why you were intentionally sarcastic without any significant sign of remorse nor promise of future efforts to curb it in the future.

Maybe it's all my faulty interpretation- We are all faulty humans. Would you please forgive me if I misunderstood?


Best Regards and Great Thanks for contributing so much to FIRST,
Dick DiPasquale"

[Chris Hibner]

I find Jon's blog on this topic very interesting, because his self-conflicting feelings on this topic is almost identical to how I feel.

One thing I've learned in all of my years in FIRST is that even though you hand someone something on a sliver platter, it doesn't mean they're going to accept it. A couple of great examples:

1) Kris posted that link back to a thread I created in 2002. That year, there was a way to win the game via a chokehold strategy. That thread that I created was a response to another thread in which the chokehold strategy was was revealed to everyone, and then went on to describe how to make a robot to execute the chokehold strategy. I thought that everyone that read that thread would instantly realize how they could easily win the game and that everyone would stop what they were doing and build the chokehold robot. I thought all robots at the championship would be very similar. As it turns out, that thread was mostly a thought experiment as virtually no one changed what they were doing.

2) Look at line-following autonomous this year. I am amazed at the number of robots that are capable scorers that just sit still in the autonomous period. FIRST gave everyone a working, off-the-shelf autonomous solution, and virtually no one did it.

It surprised me in 2002 that not more teams tried the chokehold. I rationalized that as it took too much effort for teams to make the change.

It REALLY surprises me that teams didn't use the canned line tracking code with their robots.

Anyway, I guess my point is that perhaps I overreact when I think everyone is going to have the same minibot in St. Louis.

[Brandon Holley]

John-

I think you've hit the nail on the head in regards to why minibot copying kind of has a different feel to it. It is simply much easier to copy a minibot due to its relative simplicity than other "larger" subsystems.

I headed up the minibot development side of the robot this year. We started with some younger and more inexperienced mentors, but the challenge proved to be a bit larger than we thought (especially when considering our standards for what was an acceptable design).

Our team went through dozens of iterations of minibots. Starting with FTC kit parts, we reached a point where we thought we found the optimal solution using just legal FTC parts. Our team did not think this design would be competitive, and so we started branching out trying to find the OPTIMAL design, and then we'd make it legal.

The key moment for me was a design we created that used a cone shaped drum that was rapid prototyped out of ABS, Vex wheels with tread removed, one bar of FTC u-channel, and one really strong magnet. This design proved to be the most effective by far. As we began optimizing this design in CAD, we came across many issues regarding weight, size and manufacturability. We started to optimize components based on what we could do, and slowly, but surely, our minibot began to take shape.

As we continued to optimize we saw the whole package become tighter, smaller, more integrated. We started doing test runs to further optimize it and must have run the minibot a couple hundred times to reach the point we are at now. We started to optimize other aspects of the minibot like the climb back down, how we turn it on, etc. Some hints from our friends at 148 and 1625 helped us narrow down our design choices and confirm our thought process. The end result was a minibot we are all very proud of on our team.

Our minibot won 10 consecutive minibot races at the Bayou regional when we had everything firing on all cylinders. The minibot attracted much attention from many teams at the competition. The minibot subgroup spent a significant amount of time speaking with teams who had questions about our design. We were happy to help anyone interested out. There were a couple of isolated incidents however, where teams would walk up to us and ask to take a picture of our minibot. When our team responded with a friendly question like, "Well do you want us to explain how it works?", we got a response similar to "Nah, we're just going to copy it from the picture."

These types of events are disappointing to me, because I know how hard our team worked to get our minibot to where it was. Many hours of hard work, countless assemblies and disassemblies of the minibots and many many fried tetrix motors resulted in a rather successful design.

The point of my story is that I don't generally have a problem with teams "drawing inspiration from" or "copying" another teams design, given good intentions. I could see the lightbulb turn on in someone's head when they saw our minibot, and its the same lightbulb thats flickered in my head many-a-time...the one that says "Why the heck didn't I think of that?!". As long as people are willing to use their new found inspiration in the right way, I have no problem with them gathering it.

-Brando