"Open Source" Drive Systems

I've been doing a little thinking lately (always a scary thing), and my brain stumbled upon this idea. What if students from FIRST teams across the globe banded together to create a set of "Open Source" drive train designs? I use open source loosely, more of the idea that we'd post CAD files somewhere, and make them available to anyone who wants them. I think it would be an interesting idea to try and get rolling, and here's why.

Rookie teams would see the following benefits:
1. Advanced drive systems pre-designed, available to modify however they see fit, with those who know how they work willing to give advice/help.
2. A starting point to look at: Sometimes you need to see a few ideas in order to get yours off the ground.
3. For the more advanced teams, it would give a place/area to pool ideas and make "teh most Ultimate drive system EVAR".

I was thinking there could be some sort of "admission price," or basically the posting/uploading of some sort of design or improvement.

So I'm looking for some thoughts. Would people think this a good idea? Or is this another of those ideas that I usually put out of my head?

[Bongle]

I know that 1114 posted their 2004 robot in full CAD glory (back in 2004), because I remember looking in awe at it just weeks after the competition was over. It had indendendantly turning wheel pods that could lift the robot 6 inches to get over the board elements that year.

[Pavan Dave]

The benefits to rookie and veteran teams would be incredible. The veterans would keep designing more complex, efficient drive systems and the rest of the community would harness some of the concepts and develop a completely new drive system with a little bit of everything. This would than lead to more advanced drive systems and would raise the level of design as well as competition to a whole new bar.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Pavan

The benefits to rookie and veteran teams would be incredible. The veterans would keep designing more complex, efficient drive systems and the rest of the community would harness some of the concepts and develop a completely new drive system with a little bit of everything. This would than lead to more advanced drive systems and would raise the level of design as well as competition to a whole new bar.

I sort of disagree.

Lots of teams would just take the CAD drawings of something they know works, and go replicate it. They're not going to learn anything, other than how to machine parts from a print.

A lot of teams would improve on the design however, but the teams who are likely to do so are already the ones who would be practicing iterative design in the first place.

This would be good in the event that the kit drive is not robust, reliable, or very good (ie: the banebots before the carrier plate fix).

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by Cory

I sort of disagree.

Lots of teams would just take the CAD drawings of something they know works, and go replicate it. They're not going to learn anything, other than how to machine parts from a print.

A lot of teams would improve on the design however, but the teams who are likely to do so are already the ones who would be practicing iterative design in the first place.

This would be good in the event that the kit drive is not robust, reliable, or very good (ie: the banebots before the carrier plate fix).

That factor will always exist, and does exist in almost everything. But the innovative teams that constantly come up with new designs and techniques could always use one another's ideas and modify them, to change them for the better and make an advanced system. It would almost be a contest to see who could make the best ______ drive and possibly the best OVERALL drive in terms of efficiency, weight, and cost.

I'm not saying that everybody will live by the above, I'm just saying the teams that like to improve and learn will always look elsewhere for inspiration.

The issue of the ease of copying off a system is an issue I had thought of, and I also thought of a couple solutions. We could have some sort of "fee" to gain member ship, that fee being either a manditory improvement interval (teams involved must submit some new improvement every specified interval), or that teams involved must upload/supply some sort of CAD mechanism of their own design.

This would facilitate constant improvement and new designing, which was also what I was aiming for when I thought the thing up.

[Pavan Dave]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

The issue of the ease of copying off a system is an issue I had thought of, and I also thought of a couple solutions. We could have some sort of "fee" to gain member ship, that fee being either a manditory improvement interval (teams involved must submit some new improvement every specified interval), or that teams involved must upload/supply some sort of CAD mechanism of their own design.

This would facilitate constant improvement and new designing, which was also what I was aiming for when I thought the thing up.

Another system could be based on CD reputation incorporated on what you mentioned. There will possibly be another forum for this "open source" or another website and you can only be invited if your reputation exceeds a certain level to ensure that they will contribute to the program as much as they do on CD.

[s_forbes]

Originally Posted by Cory

Lots of teams would just take the CAD drawings of something they know works, and go replicate it. They're not going to learn anything, other than how to machine parts from a print.

I think they would learn more than just how to machine parts.

Over the past two years that I have been involved with FIRST I have had the opportunity to help build one robot (our rookie year). While this was a big learning experience, I feel that I've learned more about good constructions techniques by examining the creations of other teams. Seeing different designs in the media section of this forum has provided me with many different ideas that I take and put into my own designs. I think a collection of cad files/blueprints/grainy pictures of different teams' drivetrains would be a great inspiration to many rookie and veteran teams.

I don't like the idea of having to gain membership to view the files, either, for the same reason.

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

I think they would learn more than just how to machine parts.

Over the past two years that I have been involved with FIRST I have had the opportunity to help build one robot (our rookie year). While this was a big learning experience, I feel that I've learned more about good constructions techniques by examining the creations of other teams. Seeing different designs in the media section of this forum has provided me with many different ideas that I take and put into my own designs. I think a collection of cad files/blueprints/grainy pictures of different teams' drivetrains would be a great inspiration to many rookie and veteran teams.

I don't like the idea of having to gain membership to view the files, either, for the same reason.

To that end maybe it could use something like this to let you view various CAD files for inspiration. Sort of like the image galleries on the FIRST Robotics Canada Resources web site, just in 3D.

[AdamHeard]

I'm not sure how to feel about this...

sure, it would help a lot of people out, but there is really no way to prevent people from making it exactly to print and not making any changes or improvements.

On the other hand, it could cause a lot of inspiration. Over the years, I have asked for the CAD files to various mechanisms and parts from various teams to look at; originally my plan was to copy them 1:1, but I always ended up starting from scratch and coming up with my own design. In the begging I was lost, but by the end I knew my part completely.

There is potential here, but it seems like it would be too much work to implement some sort of control over distribution.

[Billfred]

I believe it was Dr. Joe who first said (or at least got spotlighted saying) that there's a high correlation between a solid drive system and an inspirational season.

A lot of people griped in 2005 with the Kitbot that everyone's robots were looking the same from about eight inches down. To me, this is a good thing--if you followed the instructions, you would have a solid drive system. This is the bar--you will move.

Now, let's say this open system is released freely with good results. Matter of fact, let's say it eclipses the Kitbot in popularity. All of a sudden, this is now the bar. You've now established the basic standard of mobility. Someone will figure out a tweak that lets them get just a bit more out of the drive system, and uses it to kick butt in one season (and I'm perfectly willing to give them a season to enjoy the spoils of their own developments). Once that spreads out, someone will come up with a new trick. This desire to keep up with (and one-up) the Joneses is what will cause folks to want to improve upon the setup as it sits. Hopefully, they'll be awesome enough to share.

This makes me wonder, what would the general aim of the drive system be? Minimize fabrication? Reduce cost? Toughness? Lightness? Any consideration for obstacles? There are a lot of paths in drive system fabrication, and there are often several right answers (see also: the 2006 world champions with 2WD, 6WD (I think), and treads).

[Alex.Norton]

Originally Posted by Billfred

This makes me wonder, what would the general aim of the drive system be? Minimize fabrication? Reduce cost? Toughness? Lightness? Any consideration for obstacles? There are a lot of paths in drive system fabrication, and there are often several right answers (see also: the 2006 world champions with 2WD, 6WD (I think), and treads).

From what I see here I don't think it would have a specific aim or that there would be one. You could upload your own drive drive that perhaps optimizes weight but is really hard to fabricate but somebody else could upload one that has a completely different focus.

I like the idea of membership but I would argue more for using whether somebody is uploading and improving more that I would use reputation (for obvious reasons). While I make a lot of CAD files and have uploaded pictures of them I just don't comment that often and as a result don't have much reputation. I would feel that I would need to start commenting uselessly of Chiefdelphi just so that I could use the CAD system.

I hope you get this going, it sounds really cool.

[Astronouth7303]

I don't usually contribute to these discussions, but I think I have a tidbit to add.

What a team gets out of this library will depend entirely on what they're looking for. If someone comes in looking for a drivetrain for their robot, that's what they'll get. If another comes in looking for inspiration, that's what they'll get. It's all dependent on their attitude.

What this tool will hopefully do is level the playing field. Teams currently have 3 options: the kit drive, AndyMark, or their own designs. The first 2 categories cover tank drive almost exclusively. If you want any kind of holonomic drive (omni, crab, meccanum, kiwi, etc), you pretty much have to do all the R&D yourself. That's a lot of work. This allows the less-than-juggernaut teams to get some of this.

The key to making this work is that everyone contributes somehow. It doesn't have to be CAD'd to perfection. Decent pictures, CAD, ASCIIart are all acceptable. If someone else can readily make it w/o much trouble, then it's acceptable.

My $.02.

[eugenebrooks]

"Open source" as it is appled to computer software means that the user of the software is allowed to compile it, or a modified version, but may not provide a compiled version to others without also providing the modified source code and granting the same rights with respect to the source code. This is a powerful tool to encourage the development of shared software in the community.

For CAD drawings, the maufacture of the part is the equivalent of compiling the CAD source. Why would we be concerned about someone making the part exactly to the provided specifications, notwithstanding the rules that FIRST applied to that this past season? Teams learn when they make something, even from public CAD drawings, so the goals of FIRST are being pushed down the road. They learn something even when they assemble something. Heck, I learned something assembling IKEA tables this weekend.

In the open source world, the key item is the source. If a user of the source code modifies it and provides a binary to others, the user must also provide the modified source and grant the same freedoms. If your goal is to cause sharing of ideas through the CAD source, you can use a slightly more restrictive variation of this concept. Require that someone who compiles a modified version of the CAD files, building a modified part in the CAD context, provide the modified CAD files to the community. This would be a CAD Copyleft, so to speak. Others can then learn from and build on this modified CAD source, providing these CAD files to the community, and the bar is raised for everyone.

Eugene

[Madison]

I think that we've seen far less exchange of specific information about mechanical systems than we have of other pieces of information because there are a significant number of factors which affect the effectiveness and implementation of such systems that first need to be clearly defined before they're useful.

The single largest problem is that very, very few teams produce production-ready drawings of even a handful of parts of their robots, let alone entire systems. One could argue that the most effective systems are those that are most likely to have near-complete models and drawings available, but it may be that these teams also use a paperless process.

Similarly, many teams do not model their robots with an attention to detail that sufficiently fills in the blanks, necessitating an unreasonable amount of effort to support sharing that work with others. Further, if one wanted to go so far as to create a shared repository of this information, there're difficulties in standardizing file formats and naming schemes, among other things.

I understand that you're proposing that some cross-section of the FIRST community join together to create drivetrain designs that address a lot of the existing difficulties with the existing efforts of teams, but that in and of itself has some of its own challenges. I couldn't, in good faith, provide to anyone an untested platform marketed as a turnkey solution for their drivetrain woes. Someone, somewhere, needs to foot the bill in producing and testing these designs in the real world, identifying manufacturing and assembly inefficiences and correcting them, and updating the models and drawings to reflect those changes. It's not an insignificant amount of work.

Beyond that, it's asking a lot of a rookie team (or many veterans) that they be able to successfully interpret modeled components or production drawings. I've worked with some pretty amazing people -- both in FIRST and in industry -- and even they've had trouble wrapping their head around how a virtual mechanical system might operate. Often during the build season, after days of working on a part or system, someone will say, "Oh, I get it," and finally understand what my work represented.

I'm not against the notion of a collaborative effort, necessarily, but I think it's worth pointing out that there's a lot more to it than throwing together some models and calling it a day. What you're proposing here is akin to bringing a product to market and requires all of the pomp and circumstance that goes along with it -- including a bit of congratulations and celebration when it happens.