Philosophies on design reuse

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by ajlapp

Exactly.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Cory again.

Hate when this happens...

-RC

[Madison]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Cory, I respect your team, and I don't mean to call you out, but your drivetrain is so similar year to year that certain interpretations of the rules would rule out your type of design reuse.

The thing is, at this stage, I'm sure that 254 doesn't need any existing information about their drive from their old robots and could 'design' it again -- where design is taken to mean that they'll create all digital and physical assets from nothing -- in a trivial amount of time. Perhaps they already do. Does redoing the work of making part models and writing gcode constitute a new design? Do they have to arbitrarily move holes, change tolerances, or alter the shape of some component to arrive at a new design?

If you accept the latter option as the definition of a new design, which is to say that teams must make parts materially different from year to year, I don't believe that anyone outside of these teams is qualified to make a judgement about whether it's changed. So, why bother?

I don't think you can expect to regulate what it means to reuse a 'design'. The better approach, and that which I think FIRST has so far followed, is to create a competitive environment that rewards systems and strategies that are specialized to game tasks.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Cory

In all seriousness, even if you had a part that did not change at all there are endless ways you could change the design so it's not being reused. You could change the CAM file that generates the G-code to run the machine. You could make trivial dimension changes. You could issue a new drawing revision for some minor callout. You could change radii used on pockets/edges. The list goes on and on.

It's really a silly rule because FIRST is unwilling and probably more importantly unable to outline what qualifies as changing the design enough for them to be OK with it. It's also silly because anything you would re-use exactly as it was from the year before/offseason/etc is most likely a completely trivial part that would gain you no competitive advantage by designing up front.

I'm entirely in agreement with Cory on this point.

Absent guidance from FIRST, there is no standard for defining a change. If you paint the part differently, is that a design change? Different colour? Different composition? Different number of coats? Different method of application leading to different surface finish? Which functional characteristics are considered and which are neglected? To what degree must a design change be intentional, and/or consequential? What if you intend to make a change (as evidenced by your latest drawings), and then don't make the change—so that the part is now identical to a pre-season revision?

If you go down this road, there is no bright line, and thus there will inherently be inconsistency in interpretation. If FIRST accepts the inconsistency and its consequences, they ought to clearly say so. But if that inconsistency is incompatible with their stated motivations (I believe that it is), then they shouldn't make rules in this fashion. (Inconsistency in the rules adds the potential for conflict, so unless it is counteracted by a significant benefit, it should be avoided.)

Originally Posted by Cory

The rule quite obviously exists to prevent you from designing an entire system of your robot before kickoff and then implementing it immediately, but you really can't design a system that can be used wholesale with no changes, because you have no idea what it needs to do.

As I see it, FIRST should reconsider its intent: allow teams to design (and prototype) whatever they want before the build season, even if the design is destined for the final robot. That way there are no issues regarding what individual custom components remained the same through the pre-season and in-season design processes, despite being part of assemblies that were reconfigured during the season.

What's the worst that could happen? Teams could design robots and mechanisms in the hopes of having a suitable game? They could do engineering stuff year-round? Fine with me, and obviously fine with a lot of the more dedicated and more successful teams. Presumably fine with FIRST, too, since they haven't really done anything effective to curb it.


Additionally, the previous years' rules were hopeless from an enforcement standpoint because (in the general case) it is not practical for an official to evaluate all of the possible elements that could have been changed on moderately complex systems. Indeed, in nearly every case, the officials have no access to the previous designs (whether in schematic or constructed form) at all. The proposal I outlined above doesn't remedy this entirely, but simplifies the task considerably, because it then comes down to a simple question that can be much more clearly understood and answered by the team: "did you fabricate or modify any robot parts before the build season began?" (Granted, that is dependent on a good definition of fabrication/modification, but that's already covered for the most part in the rules.) Instead of the inspector having to evaluate the robot based on the dates of design changes, they evaluate it based on dates of modification. Modification is much more of a momentous event than design revision, and since it is more likely that any given team member will be aware of it, it's harder for them to forget or lie about at inspection. (And perhaps more importantly, if the team member does forget/lie, they're more likely to be called out on it by a fellow team member later on—so violators lose the shield of plausible deniability among the people whose approval they value most.)

Besides, my position is that (in a typical FRC game, rather than universally) an inspector should be giving the teams the benefit of any plausible interpretation within the rules. The teams are not the source of unclear rules, and they should not be penalized for successfully following a reasonable interpretation of those rules. (As a result, inter-event inconsistency sometimes ensues, but it is typically balanced by the fact that the teams are able to play, unburdened by surprise modifications, having complied with the apparent letter of the rules.)

[dtengineering]

We learn things as we go along in FRC. What we learn enables us to design better machines faster. It sounds like you learned a lot in the off-season. Never be afraid to embrace what you have learned, and use that knowledge on your machine.

I guess my suggestion, however, would be that the off-season and previous season knowledge should be stored in a human, or group of humans, rather than in a data file. After all, FIRST isn't really about the robot.

So in the event that the game that is announced on Saturday is perfectly suited for your off-season design, then just sit down at your computer, start with a blank CAD file, and re-create your design from scratch.

It might be identical to the off-season design, but you will have done the work during build season... you'll simply have done it faster, with more confidence and less troubleshooting because of experience you gained in the off season. By demonstrating your knowledge of a good design you'll not only be within the letter of the rule, but also the spirit of the rule.

Most likely, however, you'll find yourself making a few tweaks here and there to improve the off-season design or customize it for the game... I mean, what are the odds you'd build something so perfectly that it couldn't be improved upon a little bit?

Jason

[Wildcats1378]

I've never quite understood how FRC enforces this rule in the first place. Programming, for example: how does FRC know when you've copied code from last year?

Has anyone actually been disqualified for this? It seems more like a moral guideline then an actual rule.

[DampRobot]

That is exactly what it is. A moral guideline rather than a rule (such as robot weight, number of appendages, etc).

[Cory]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Cory, I respect your team, and I don't mean to call you out, but your drivetrain is so similar year to year that certain interpretations of the rules would rule out your type of design reuse.

If you actually sat down and compared CAD models there are subtle differences between every drivebase. There is only one part I can think of that is not materially different year to year and even then things change slightly in the manufacturing process and material selection, which is easily considered part of the design of the part. Every single other part that looks the same has experienced a meaningful design change every year it has been used, for at least the last 4-5 years.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by ToddF

For the first time, our team has managed to do some serious development work during the off-season. We have debated internally about how best to utilize what we have learned while staying both within the letter and the spirit of the design reuse rules. ....

ToddF,
I concur with others on congratulations on doing some off-season work to make your team better.
While the rule seems pretty clear cut, some of the blue box examples make it otherwise.
Also keep in mind that FIRST sponsors BETA Test teams to test the software. Some things they learn will get rolled out to other teams, but not every detail.

I think the strong feelings that differ on this topic may stem from a difference between Academia and Corporate world. In academia, if you use someone else’s thoughts to explain a position without referencing it, then you are plagiarizing. This position puts an interesting emphasis on original work.
Often on engineering projects, you are requested to use "Lessons Learned", re-use internal designs that have been validated, or attempt "Commonality".

When these two cultures read the same rule, they have slightly different interpretations. I would almost guarantee you that at certain regionals, if you did a big sales pitch in the pits about "commonality", "design libraries", and using TDS (Toyota Development System) principles of reusing reliable designs you could likely win a Quality of Industrial Design award. Winning awards doesn't make it right, but it does speak to the disconnect of some views on this subject, and what industry professionals (often the biggest chunk of Judges) would love for students to be able to bring to the table.

One of my favorite students to go through our program was obsessed with originality his first two years. He designed some really neat but fairly impractical designs. We talked to him about benchmarking and paying attention to good design details. Having Form follow Useful Function (most of his early designs were more about unique Form to create novel function). The stuff he churns out now is really impressive. On the surface it may look like something you have seen before, but the details are really impressive.

Per "apalard's" post about re-using, to my knowledge, the closest we came to re-using a major system was the chassis project of 2010 and our competition chassis of 2011. They were really close but arguably different in many, many, many aspects. That being said, our 2006, 2007, 2008 chassis were all 6x6 sheet metal designs with dead axles and shiftable transmissions. The architectures were similar (especial 2007 and 2008) but all the design details were different.

Ultimately, your team will have to figure out where their comfort is.

Oh, and I would recommend not doing a swerve drive for the first time during the build season. FYSS (First Year Swerve Syndrome) is a well documented condition that has the symptoms of early delusions of grandeur followed by countless headaches, sleeplessness, depression, irritability, and in some cases I have seen it be fatal (to a team).

[tim-tim]

You should always be able to make the design better.

We view the off-season as a research and development period. We gain a lot in the proof of concept categories. Almost none of our work would be competiton worthy, for reasons such as material selection, manufacturing techniques, weight, etc.

Look at your concepts/designs and improve them. You and your team probably learned a lot from the experience of the off-season; now put those lessons learned to work.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Wildcats1378

I've never quite understood how FRC enforces this rule in the first place. Programming, for example: how does FRC know when you've copied code from last year?

Has anyone actually been disqualified for this? It seems more like a moral guideline then an actual rule.

FRC can't enforce the rule. Of course, that begs the question "Why should they need to?"

If teams are really trying to stick by the rules as closely as possible, they already realize that reuse of entire designs or entire chunks of code is a no-no. Unless they post them on-line and make them available to everyone. I believe that's the end goal: to have teams sharing information freely (after the season and before the season) in order to bring everyone along.

If teams didn't share freely, you wouldn't see products like AndyMark's super shifter (designed in 2004 for team use), their AM planetary, and other products / designs. See the trapezoidal motion profile thread for a great example of teams who have a competitive advantage helping to bring others up to speed.

Of course, this all assume that teams get the idea of Gracious Professionalism. I'm going to continue to assume that. Most of the big-name teams constantly prove it (kit-bot on steriods, etc).

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Wildcats1378

I've never quite understood how FRC enforces this rule in the first place. Programming, for example: how does FRC know when you've copied code from last year?

Has anyone actually been disqualified for this? It seems more like a moral guideline then an actual rule.

The only time I have seen a clear ability to enforce the rule was when a custom piece had an inspection sticker from a previous year on it. I also saw a team bring last years robot to a competition (I think it was 2011, and they brought a 2010 bot). I believe they packed up and left (if memory serves me right).

[philso]

If a team is using the AndyMark C-channels, and they happen to determine that they should use the same motors, gearboxes and gear ratios and the same size wheels, as they had used in a previous year, they will end up with the "same design" for their drive base. It will also likely be pretty much the same as the drive base used by a number of other teams who arrived at the same solution. I don't feel this is bad as long as the teams went through the engineering exercise that happened to lead them to a solution they had used before since this is an engineering competition and one of it's goals is to teach the team members how do work through the engineering exercise. As someone had posted in an earlier reply "FIRST isn't really about the robot".

[Wayne TenBrink]

I would go one step further and argue that some amount of unregulated (predesigned and/or prefabricated) components/mechanisms should be allowed. Perhaps 10 or 20 lb (analagous to the withholding allowance) and only on the condition that you share the design and declare the items on the BOM.

Teams would still need to build a new robot every year, but at least they would benefit from the same advantages you get with buying a COTS mechanism. With all the FRC-specific COTS items on the market today, why invest time and money into building something that you can only use once, when you can buy a comparable unit and re-use it? Examples include gearboxes, swerve mechanisms, and now even entire drive modules.

In many cases, using a pre-designed or pre-fabricated mechanism would be more of a detriment than a benefit, because it would involve compromising function for convenience.

The current rules made more sense when every team had to make every mechanism because nobody could buy them. That isn't so true any more, and the FRC-COTS market is likely to grow. This might reduce the artificial exercise of lawyering our way around rules that are not and cannot be uniformly enforced in the first place.

[AdamHeard]

Raul posted a similar idea years ago, and I really like it.

Allowing 20 lbs of custom items to be reused year to year won't make good teams any better, but it will really help the rest of the teams substantially.

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

I would go one step further and argue that some amount of unregulated (predesigned and/or prefabricated) components/mechanisms should be allowed. Perhaps 10 or 20 lb (analagous to the withholding allowance) and only on the condition that you share the design and declare the items on the BOM.

Teams would still need to build a new robot every year, but at least they would benefit from the same advantages you get with buying a COTS mechanism. With all the FRC-specific COTS items on the market today, why invest time and money into building something that you can only use once, when you can buy a comparable unit and re-use it? Examples include gearboxes, swerve mechanisms, and now even entire drive modules.

In many cases, using a pre-designed or pre-fabricated mechanism would be more of a detriment than a benefit, because it would involve compromising function for convenience.

The current rules made more sense when every team had to make every mechanism because nobody could buy them. That isn't so true any more, and the FRC-COTS market is likely to grow. This might reduce the artificial exercise of lawyering our way around rules that are not and cannot be uniformly enforced in the first place.

[wilhitern1]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Raul posted a similar idea years ago, and I really like it.

Allowing 20 lbs of custom items to be reused year to year won't make good teams any better, but it will really help the rest of the teams substantially.

If I remember the rules correctly... (probably not)... If you fully publish everything about how to build your design. You can then use 100% of it year over year...

Neal

I'll have to go back and check the manual on that.