Team Update 14 (2016)

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

It's not really a fair entry into this argument either.

It was a robot designed in ~ 2 hours and made in a day out of 2x4s that was top heavy as heck.

It is however a decent indication that if 973 can build a semi competitive clone in a day, a much more average team should be able to do it in a few weeks?

1477 chimed in saying that they tried to do it and weren't overly successful, so maybe less teams than I thought would be able to pull the copy off.

2826 did a copy of 2013 254, which was (lets be honest here) a ridiculously complex robot. I dunno what timeline that was, but probably a bunch of time.

Of course all these examples show that the copies aren't as good as the originals, but that was the premise from the start anyways, so not sure why we are still commentating on it. The point is that it could very well up their competitiveness.

So then what don't I like about it then? Seems like a win win?

In my experience in other programs (albeit easier to modify and lower budget) teams have this need to be all secretive of their designs and compete late. Someone brought up VEX competitions filling early september and october. Basically those aren't any of the good teams. And usually whenever a design gets revealed/leaked before world championships it means it was done against the team's will/it was an old design and they already have a much better robot. A good example of this is the New Zealand vex teams which are incredibly strong and consistently put out championship winning worthy robots. They don't stream besides like their national championship very late in the season. Robots and teams there feel very distant to me at least. It is worth saying that there are some regions with webcasts and such do stream, Ontario being one of the main ones. I think the culture is slightly shifting into more of a sharing one too, but i'm not too involved in the VEX community anymore to be a great judge of that.

Plenty of teams already don't reveal anything until they absolutely have to keep their competitive edge. eg 1114, 2056, 2826?, 1678? I'm sure there are others, and for 2826 and 1678, I don't actually know those are mostly guesses in general they tease/reveal later in the season. Not that I don't understand the reasoning behind it and see how it's advantageous, it's just that I really enjoy seeing the robots in a polished way like 118 and so many other teams that put out videos earlier. Removing bag day I think would cause more teams to do this.

Copying is smart. Why re-invent the wheel? I just don't love the secretive nature culture that results from it, and I would prefer FRC not to be like this.

[mr.roboto2826]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

It is however a decent indication that if 973 can build a semi competitive clone in a day, a much more average team should be able to do it in a few weeks?

2826 did a copy of 2013 254, which was (lets be honest here) a ridiculously complex robot. I dunno what timeline that was, but probably a bunch of time.

Plenty of teams already don't reveal anything until they absolutely have to keep their competitive edge. eg 1114, 2056, 2826?, 1678? I'm sure there are others, and for 2826 and 1678, I don't actually know those are mostly guesses in general they tease/reveal later in the season. Not that I don't understand the reasoning behind it and see how it's advantageous, it's just that I really enjoy seeing the robots in a polished way like 118 and so many other teams that put out videos earlier. Removing bag day I think would cause more teams to do this.

Copying is smart. Why re-invent the wheel? I just don't love the secretive nature culture that results from it, and I would prefer FRC not to be like this.

I guess I'll chime in since I was one of the people involved with that robot. That robot was inspired by 254 yes, but mostly just the climber. In fact that robot was 33, 341, and 254 all thrown together with a 2826 twist. We did in fact copy, and yes it is smart. But I would never do that again, much less in 4 weeks (yes 4 weeks from start of design to competing at iri). The most important thing we learned however is what we were capable of. We saw what these other guys were doing and figured out how to do it ourselves.

And in regards to the "secretive nature culture", I can't count the number of times teams like 1114, 254, 118 and so on have been open to explaining their designs. Thats why Wave is at where we are today, because these teams were open, and gracious to show us everything they had!

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by mr.roboto2826

I guess I'll chime in since I was one of the people involved with that robot. That robot was inspired by 254 yes, but mostly just the climber. In fact that robot was 33, 341, and 254 all thrown together with a 2826 twist. We did in fact copy, and yes it is smart. But I would never do that again, much less in 4 weeks (yes 4 weeks from start of design to competing at iri). The most important thing we learned however is what we were capable of. We saw what these other guys were doing and figured out how to do it ourselves.

And in regards to the "secretive nature culture", I can't count the number of times teams like 1114, 254, 118 and so on have been open to explaining their designs. Thats why Wave is at where we are today, because these teams were open, and gracious to show us everything they had!

I don't think that's what he meant about secrecy. He is saying that if teams don't think copying is a big deal, why don't the big teams reveal at bag day or even earlier. I'm sure every team has their reasons but if you asked some of the teams you mentioned or other teams of the same caliber to explain their designs before they revealed it, I would guess you get a different response.

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

I don't think that's what he meant about secrecy. He is saying that if teams don't think copying is a big deal, why don't the big teams reveal at bag day or even earlier. I'm sure every team has their reasons but if you asked any of the teams you mentioned to explain their designs before they revealed it, I would guess you get a different response.

Pretty much yes, now of course there are other factors like finishing the robot is more important than making a video. (probably the most common reason) Was just stating that some teams intentionally hold off on their reveals till later to maintain a competitive edge. (which is smart)

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

I don't think that's what he meant about secrecy. He is saying that if teams don't think copying is a big deal, why don't the big teams reveal at bag day or even earlier. I'm sure every team has their reasons but if you asked any of the teams you mentioned to explain their designs before they revealed it, I would guess you get a different response.

We don't publicly show our robot, but we show it to our friends on other teams no problem, and that sharing goes both ways for the most part.

We also don't really ever get done in time to have a release video in a "normal" time.

We had the robot fully done in CAD the Saturday before bag day this year. It was assembled as much as possible at 11:50 pm on Bag night. The programmers had it for 5 min to do a quick systems test and then we weighed it and threw it in a bag.

Our release videos are done with our practice robot.