Past/Present Innovations

[Gadget470]

This is to all teams who have a media of an invention or new mechanism designed by your team, used on a FIRST robot.
For example: The TechnoKats gearbox:
The Technokats released info about their box so that other teams could build it. If you built it based on their design and only altered dimensions, do not reply with yours please.

What I want to do is create a "Inspiration from Innovations" book. It will be a collection of different things teams made, from gearboxes, crab drives, end effectors, lifting mechanisms, the whole 9 yards.

I then plan to gather permissions from their respective inventors to publish the material as public domain, most likely in PDF format.

I believe that most of the inspiration for new ideas comes from what has already been invented. What better way to think up a new idea for something than to look at what other people have tried. We have all seen the statement "I got the idea from XYZ's robot last year" even though the piece looks nothing like XYZ's piece in form or functionality.

Many people who design things stop and look at whats already made and try to improve on them. Either in ease of machining or usage.

This could also be a great use for rookie teams.
"We need to design a gearbox. We don't have a CNC Mill to make super precise holes. *checks book* Hey look, Team X did this one with hand drills! Hey, they also were finalists at a regional with it. How can we make this work for this years game?"

This is a call to arms of teams with designs that they are willing to publicly release, including measurements (if you have them). A picture is worth a thousand words. A detailed drawing is worth a thousand ideas.

There are 4 good ways to post your replies to this:

1: Chief Delphi within this thread.
a) Post images to the CD Gallery then linking the images with the [img] tag.
b) Post white papers to the White Papers section, and providing a [url] link to the paper.
2: Post a link to your teams website which contains the above
3: E-Mail the above to: brandon@470robotics.com
4: Snail Mail packages of information to:
Brandon Joerges
FIRST Robotics
2657 Oakshire
Berkley, MI 48072

[Please entitle it with "FIRST Robotics" in the address label, my parents have thrown stuff away before because they thought it was things like VISA/MC applications or other junk mail]

[Gadget470]

As of tomarrow, should I not recieve any response.. this project will be scrapped.

[Rich Kressly]

Gadget,
Perhaps the timing here is bad. Right after competition season is a time for teams to do this. All are now gearing up with their new ideas for 2004. I'd put this call out in Feb, then resurrect it in March and then again in April and I'm sure you'll get some responses. Good Luck.

[Gadget470]

Good point, thanks.

I was kinda getting flustered at the zero response, but your post makes a lot of sense.

I guess I was too excited about getting rolling on it to realize timing.