Philosophies on design reuse

[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.

[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.

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by wilhitern1

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.

I believe Adam is talking about the idea of reusing a certain amount of physical parts from a previous year. It's an interesting idea since at first glance it seems to go against the nature of the competition as it currently exists. I think I like the idea since it would help the finance situation for some teams. I don't really see a world class team creating, for example, a set of awesomely light / compact / machining intensive swerve modules and reusing them every year. Instead they'd probably choose to make subtle improvements and fabricate the new version each season. But I could see a team benefiting from the ability to reuse a C-Channel with a couple of holes drilled in it.

The idea of publishing your design to legally use it in competition only appears in the manual regarding software (2009-2012 rules). The manual doesn't really provide an answer as to whether publishing CAD drawings makes it legal to reuse a design. But as others have said, it's basically a moot point since you can make a trivial modification and then be technically legal.

It should simply be legal to design stuff before the build season.

[robert.hatchett]

I have read the entire thread and appreciate the nuances presented. However, I feel I need to comment.

I would ask all who have offerred opinions to recall we are MENTORS and as such have the RESPONSIBILITY to teach, not only engineering principles, but engineering ethics in the spirit of the engineering canon and also the spirit, if not the letter, oft FIRST principles and rules.

Repackaging of items prior to kickoff should pass the oft-quoted "make your grandma proud".

[wilhitern1]

Originally Posted by robert.hatchett

Repackaging of items prior to kickoff should pass the oft-quoted "make your grandma proud".

I've never had that problem, since my kids always want to try something extreme!

[dtengineering]

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.

In general I'm pretty good with the idea that everything is designed, built and programmed during build season... the designing, building and programming is done based on what you learned in the off season, and might be really similar to something that you've built before, but I like the simplicity of the rule.

Where it did bother me, though, was in the needless waste of certain items, most noticably bumpers. We'd do it... we'd slice up new plywood, purchase new pool noodles, buy new fabric and label it (or not) as required. It wasn't a big waste when we only needed one set of bumpers every year, but it did seem a bit needless to build two sets every year when they could have been cut down or modified.

So from a game persepective, I'm good with the rules as they are, but from a cost and waste persepective, a modification of this type makes sense.

Jason

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

In general I'm pretty good with the idea that everything is designed, built and programmed during build season... the designing, building and programming is done based on what you learned in the off season, and might be really similar to something that you've built before, but I like the simplicity of the rule.

Where it did bother me, though, was in the needless waste of certain items, most noticably bumpers. We'd do it... we'd slice up new plywood, purchase new pool noodles, buy new fabric and label it (or not) as required. It wasn't a big waste when we only needed one set of bumpers every year, but it did seem a bit needless to build two sets every year when they could have been cut down or modified.

So from a game persepective, I'm good with the rules as they are, but from a cost and waste persepective, a modification of this type makes sense.

Jason

Jason, I never even considered this until you mentioned it.

Reusing bumpers provides absolutely no competitive advantage to teams. In addition, being able to make one set and reuse it might result in much nicer bumpers - I know we'd probably put more work into them if we could reuse them multiple years.

Dear FIRST - ALLOW bumper reuse!!!!