Collaborations

[Avarik]

Collaborations generally start due to team relations. The 22/254 collaboration began because one of our students contacted 254/60 about their drive train. over the summer, 254/22 worked together to work out some kinks. We originally planned to just collaborate on the drive train, but a few days after kickoff, we just seemed to kinda decide that a full collaboration was most efficient for all.

I feel that there are many advantages to collaborations. Just take a look the 968/254 bot - it's got 3 regional wins under its belt already!

[nuggetsyl]

Our team was thinking about it and we asked a few others if they wanted to but everyone we talked to was not interested in the idea. It takes us soooooo long to build a robot anyway working with another team might be tough. Ex this year we only had 2 days to program. Because the machine was not working up to our specs.

shaun

[Mr. Van]

Originally Posted by Avarik

I feel that there are many advantages to collaborations. Just take a look the 968/254 bot - it's got 3 regional wins under its belt already!

While there are many reasons to collaborate, I hope that the primary one is to Inspire students.

It seems to me that many of the teams that collaborate are already very capable teams that have very, very effective programs. At the time of their collaboration, 254 & 60 had each already won many regionals on their own. The same could be said for 22 & 254 last year. This year, the trend seems to continue.

To the teams that have collaborated: Has the collaboration improved your ability to engage and inspire students?

-Mr. Van
Coach, 599

[Travis Covington]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

To the teams that have collaborated: Has the collaboration improved your ability to engage and inspire students?

-Mr. Van
Coach, 599

That was the goal. Being that we only really have a few college mentors, and one teacher, any free time we have where we aren't designing and running around getting parts made means more time we can spend with the students. Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite as well as we had hoped, but I still feel like it gave us a little more free time than we had in the past to spend with the students, engaging them and teaching them more about how the engineering process works. I'd like to think the students had a little more of our time this year than in years past, but I'll let them answer that.

[kiettyyyy]

Originally Posted by Travis Covington

That was the goal. Being that we only really have a few college mentors, and one teacher, any free time we have where we aren't designing and running around getting parts made means more time we can spend with the students. Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite as well as we had hoped, but I still feel like it gave us a little more free time than we had in the past to spend with the students, engaging them and teaching them more about how the engineering process works. I'd like to think the students had a little more of our time this year than in years past, but I'll let them answer that.

See, I learned about how potentiometers worked along with lots of other electrical stuff that travis showed me AND I LEARNED HOW TO SOLDER!!! and lots more great season!

[Rick TYler]

OK, I know it's thread drift, but you can also see strong influence from a leading team in an area in the designs of other teams. For example, Washington teams are nearly all 6WD, and at least four of them used 9x2 BeadLoks this year. I assume all of these teams were influenced by 492, a multiple regional winner who is more than willing to help anyone with anything. The Bellevue practice event especially showed the influence of Titan Robotics. We weren't all clones, but you could see some genetic influence (except the X- Bots -- Madison has been doing FIRST for a long time, and shows a distinctive East-coast influence).

[sanddrag]

We have never collaborated with anyone but we'd be open to any flattering offers. However, in 2003, team 498 took great interest in our simple but very effective drive system and we explained it in great detail to them. We were happy to see a nearly identical version on their robot in 2004.

[SpaceOsc]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

OK, I know it's thread drift, but you can also see strong influence from a leading team in an area in the designs of other teams. For example, Washington teams are nearly all 6WD, and at least four of them used 9x2 BeadLoks this year. I assume all of these teams were influenced by 492, a multiple regional winner who is more than willing to help anyone with anything. The Bellevue practice event especially showed the influence of Titan Robotics. We weren't all clones, but you could see some genetic influence (except the X- Bots -- Madison has been doing FIRST for a long time, and shows a distinctive East-coast influence).

First no longer works in regional basis nor a state basis, its national if not yet global. the 6wd trend follows the path of previous trends like crab drives, omni wheels, wedge top tread. and mageneum wheels where 1 -5 teams figure out these nice new useful technologies and the following years u see more and more common teams using them as it becomes more accessible mainly thru companies that offer ready made parts like AndyMark, IFI, and FIRST. just notice the KitBOT frame... its ideal for 6WD since it has the center holes at a 1/8 lower offset. This 6WD craze was long over due.

[Drew]

What are they, You have been seeing them all over the competitions. Numerous bots that are exactly the same in everyway but one or two zip ties... Why is this, It kind of seems unfair. There is no creativity in these bots but the original designs. Its almost like, We cant figure out how to do this game so lets wait until another team gets an idea and let them give us the fabrication idea's parts, and help. Yea it is good to be gratious professionals and share your ideas and help other teams, but its like were here for a learning experiance and in the real world when you start designing your own products lets see how many companies will just come along and let you completly replicate your product. Now im sorry if i am seeming angry or mean but i tell you that i am not. Im just curious if there is a reason for this, its just weird seeing this sudden boom of replicated robots. If thats all we had to do then why didnt someone inform us, we could have join up with a diffrent team. do you or anyone else think that there may be a rule against clone bots, like a patented robot, If you make it no one else can copy to exact specification. Even though that is getting a little to extreme. the only good part i saw on this topic is once you find the weak points to the robot you know the weak points to the others also. so in terms the outcome can become good and bad... i guess it all just really comes down to autonomous and the programmer, just like always.... Blame the programmer

[themagic8ball]

Well a lot of the duplicate robots come from sister teams. I know two teams that came into Milwaukee with the same exact robot and I personally thought it was unfair. Its like basically taking one team, registering as 2, building 2 robots to bring to competition and if one breaks you have twice as much allowance of spare parts not to mention another whole robot worth of parts.

[dhitchco]

Originally Posted by Drew

What are they, You have been seeing them all over the competitions. Numerous bots that are exactly the same in everyway but one or two zip ties... Why is this, It kind of seems unfair. There is no creativity in these bots but the original designs......Now im sorry if i am seeming angry or mean but i tell you that i am not. Im just curious .....

Hey Drew,
I've been doing our team's photo/video at two regionals thus far (Finger Lakes & Boston) and agree that there are some robots with "similar" designs. I've been especially impressed with those bots that use vertical corkscrew ball elevators.

Since FIRST is really NOT a corporate-spying event, I fully embrace idea-sharing and design-stealing. It's not the bot itself that will win, it's much more in the learning process as well as the inter-team alliance-selection process.

So, even if there was 100 identical robots, I'll bet you than one of those teams will forget a zip-tie and their battery will die, or one of them will get pinned, etc.

So, let the designs fall-out where they may. In fact, I'd love to see a design book each year outlining the major "themes" of designs (e.g sweepers, elevators, corkscrews, 2-ball shooters, etc)

[thoughtful]

First of all this topic has been discussed all around CD.

I dont know about many cloned teams, but i know of the Triplets from Niagara FIRST. They collaborate on they collaborate on everything but the competition(meaning once they are on the field they will all play their hearts out). 1114 in 2005 took two other teams under their wing in order to promote FIRST in a region where they were the lone team. On the field they are a very GP team and matches between triplets are always fun. I dont see anything wrong with this. Although they might gain some advantages, it takes a lot of effort and energy to manage one team let alone work together with three. Many first teams might have to do this in the future in order to cope with lower fund raising money and human capital.

[Drew]

yea we also build a duplicate robot so we have a spare change of parts for everything. We could as well give our robot to a seprate team and they would be off and going, but we dont because its for change of parts because defiantly we loose parts every competition. I agree in the fact that the unfairity of the situation remains high because the teams pair up at the end, while one being very good on its own to score 40+ points per game they are stoppable but with 2 and 3 on the same alliance with one on defense and the other two scoring 100+ scores come with a breeze potentally owning the competition.. seems kind of unfortunate but it's something that cant be changed, its not too big of a problem though

[Tristan Lall]

First, read the rules.

That should be the first step in any FIRST endeavour. In fact, the rules don't prohibit the exchange of designs. And if a team decides that it will release its design to the FIRST community at large, what's unfair about making use of it? And further, if two or more teams decide that they want to use similar designs, once again, the rules do not prohibit it.

More to the point, I suspect, you've offered very shaky justification for your position—you imply that teams "cant figure out how to do this game so lets wait until another team gets an idea and let them give us the fabrication idea's parts, and help [sic]". Maybe for the most complacent of teams, that's the case. But for most of the collaborative designs that I've come across, the design is the result of a partnership, and not of one team doing all the work while its partners merely clone the end result.

Also, the analogy of a business is not appropriate, because it a FIRST team will often want to allow you access to their design. In business, that sort of thing is the exception; in FIRST it is commonplace. For this reason, you can't expect that a team will necessarily attempt to protect its designs, as if they were the trade secrets of a business. (In some cases, teams keep designs secret to maintain a competitive advantage; in others, they give freely. There is no rule on this matter either.)

It's insane to consider it unfair, since neither you nor anyone else has been wronged, and the neither the rules nor the unwritten conventions have been breached.

[Don Wright]

Originally Posted by dhitchco

Hey Drew,
I've been doing our team's photo/video at two regionals thus far (Finger Lakes & Boston) and agree that there are some robots with "similar" designs.

It goes further than similiar... Just look around on CD for a few minutes...