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Unread 05-05-2013, 19:00
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

Sorry to post so closely together, but I forgot to hit on the 'ripping off other designs' argument to the level that I planned to in my previous post.

Yes, an open build season will lead to robot designs being copied on a wider scale than they are now, but I think that the overall effect is being widely overestimated. There are three important years that come to mind on this subject:

2008 - 121 Released their robot sometime towards the end of week three. Their claw and arm combination were so simple and reliable that most teams in FRC could have replicated the setup, an a tonne of teams did. I can remember talking about the 121 clones that year, and the funny thing is that many/most of the clones could never perform at the level that 121 did that year, despite being one of the most simple (and elegant) machine shapes possible.

2011 - Logomotion, for all intents and purposes, was an 'easier' version of 2007's game rack and roll - with the primary differences being the 3 different tube shapes instead of one, and a stationary scoring structure in place of 2007's rack. (The scoring grid in 2011 made things easier, if anything). I can remember on of my first thoughts being 'So we pick a 2007 design that we like, tweak it and go play?'. That sort of ideology would have lead most teams to building a solid upper middle tier robot, if executed properly, but for one reason or another, the copying wasn't as widely spread as many people expected, and there were still a handful of 'bad' copies.

2012 - Rebound Rumble, is almost the same to 2006 as 2011 was to 2007; heck, I and others I know, still refer to it as Aim High Part II. The same logic applied to 2011 above applies here, and even though there was some incentive to copy, many teams didn't.

If these years have taught me anything, it's that even with an open build season, we won't see teams rebuilding their robots to resemble 1114/469/2056/254/148/33/233/118 en masse - well, unless those teams unveil their robots within 3 days of kickoff like RI3D* did....

That being said, an open build season, may lead to more widespread copying of smaller mechanisms and/or 'magic' devices during future seasons. Here are the devices/mechanisms I can think of off the top of my head:

2008 - 'Drive-through' trackball removing devices.
2009 - 'Spin in circles' autonomous modes.
2010 - 'IFI Ball Pincher'. (And an array of other ball magnets)
2011 - 'Super Fast Minibots'. (Honorable Mention to the Roller Claw with an opening jaw.)
2012 - 'Stingers/Dingus' and other balancing aids.
2013 - It's hard to say right now, but it seems like Pyramid Antenna or Pneumatic 10pt climbers win out here.

Looking back, I'm not sure if the spread of any of these things was necessarily a bad thing. Very rarely did any one of these devices propel a robot from the bottom of the ranks into the top tier, but they did help to level out the playing field at the top, especially at the CMP. If anything, the only negative thing I could say about any of these is that it can suck to have something you've worked hard on ripped off by another team... But with that being said, if you're on the ball, by the time another team has ripped off what you've made, you're already using a new and improved version.

*I think RI3D is one of the best things to happen to FRC in a LONG time. The fact that so many teams were essentially handed prototyping information and a proven robot shape really helped to raise the level of competition at most events. I know that I referenced those videos more than once, especially as a way to validate some of our own results. Without a doubt, RI3D is responsible for a sizable portion of the mid-tier explosion that we saw this year.
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