If you could change one rule

[Ken Patton]

Originally Posted by dlavery

I think that we should look for potential rules that can be made MORE restrictive, and scale back the "almost anything goes" philosophy that has become associated with the robot construction rules over the past several years. I believe that this philosophy has lead to a lot less true creativity and innovation in the robots, as teams have just gone out and bought solutions to design problems rather than creating solutions from a kit part that was never intended to do the job for which it would now be used. I would be all in favor of adding more restrictions back in to the robot construction rules to bring back some of the real creativity that every team displayed during the early years of FIRST.

-dave

I have to disagree. The type of creativity that gets applied when a team is coming up with a new use for some existing piece of hardware or software is different than the creativity required to successfully implement some new design concept. At the risk of being a bit flippant, I would call it "junkyard engineering" versus "real design."

Not that JE is unimportant. We all do it! Its fun, cheap, and fast.

As someone already mentioned, the unrestrictive type of rules would not prevent teams from taking off-the-shelf items and creatively using them.

But... the restrictive type of rules would prevent teams from implementing great NEW ideas, because presumably there would be material or content limitations.

Take for example, the omni wheel. Some might think that AndyMark pioneered its use in FIRST because they are the ones who make it easily available to us all. But before AndyMark, there were teams that concepted and designed their own. I would suggest that Team 67's use of their own omniwheel design in 1998 was due to the relatively unrestricted nature of the rules back then (ignoring the fact that even then the rules were relatively restricted compared to today). If teams were given a choice of only using wheels from a certain source or kit, would any of us have the chance to learn to deal with scrub by designing something new?

The above might be too restrictive of an example, but hopefully it gets the point across.

What was more creative: Beatty's use of a bucket from page xyz of the SPI catalog for the base of their detacheable skewer in 1997, or the concept of a detacheable skewer?

My vote is for allowing teams to create something from nothing. I occasionally tell people that the magic part of engineering is the ability to make something from nothing. Making something from something-else is not as impressive in my opinion. It is not as inspirational. And (again my opinion) its all about the big I.

Ken