[FTC]: Please Don't Post Pictures

[ManicMechanic]

We've been on both sides of the photo coin. At our first regional FLL tournament, there was a team that followed our robot around with a video camera. Our team had never attended a robotics event of any kind or seen any competition robots in photos, so the ideas used were original. The team was initially outraged when the other team showed up at the State Championship with a near replica of their robot.

The team quickly changed its thinking when:
1) The other team's replica robot performed even worse than the one they brought to regionals,
2) The team got to see the work of other, better robots at State and thought, "Hey, we'd like to use these ideas in the future." They realized that there was far more to gain than lose by sharing.

The team is comfortable with sharing, but fully understands and emphathizes with those who prefer not to. We respect the wishes of those who want to save their best designs for competition (and we hope they'll be willing to post after the season is finished).

Originally Posted by jbbjjbt

Early in the season at the first FTC events, there are many varieties of robots showing much creativity. By Worlds, it seams to me that there are many copies of a very few robots. In FRC the robots are shipped after six weeks, so there are many varied and creative robots.

I think the lack of variety has more to do with the structuring and point values assigned to the game tasks. More tasks with more balanced weighting of points would result in better variety and creativity of robots. There is more discussion on this topic in the Vex forum at this thread.

[Travis Hoffman]

I created a thread in which teams willing to share can post FTC robot pic and match video links:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=70650

For those adverse to the concept, I've read the thread(s) on not posting pictures of robots. I would counter that this season is unique in that few, if any, teams have ever created anything with the Tetrix kit prior to the season - finding design examples posted online is difficult to impossible. Rookie teams who've had zero exposure to either kit - VEX or FTC - have absolutely nowhere to go to get ideas based on the new system outside of their team, unless others are willing to share current season designs.

Many have noted the initial gap in parts/design flexibility between the VEX kit and the initial iteration of the FTC kit. Regardless of other reasoning, those who do not wish to share current season photos cannot use the excuse that rookies can go look at pics of VEX robots for inspiration, because a large portion of the designs created on the VEX platform are currently impossible using the FTC platform. Suggesting rookies go on a wild goose chase for designs that cannot be built using current year components - something rookies would not be able to easily discern on their own - is not a logical course of action.

For those who have competed already, who've taken pictures, who've recorded match videos, please consider sharing this information in this thread early and often, for the benefit of all during a unique transitional season. Think of your actions as serving as FTC "beta testers" in the same vein as the FRC testers - the most capable adopters of a new technology share their experiences with all for the benefit of an entire community.