pic: 2011 Drive Prototype

[gallo26]

I don't get the problem here. He's taking the time to design something during the off-season to take a chance and inspire his team to use something they never have before. FIRST is all about teams sharing ideas and collaborating. If there was a team against that theory I'm positive they would not be a part of it. James is right in saying its VERY rare to see anything original anymore.

Copying someone's design is taking their work, piece by piece, and calling it your own. BUT, if you take someone else's design and modify it to accommodate any changes you might like, it becomes an original design. The Car, it has 4 wheels, a power source, steering wheel, and seats. It's been done. Companies design new cars everyday. Same concept. same core pieces, but small parts are modified. They patent that design and call it an original design.

I should be able to say that Krab Drive was designed completely by Team 79. But look through the history of FIRST, it's been done. But what we DID do is take the swerve drive, modify the modules to what we found best, fit the design into a chassis we can work with, and built a robot with it. This became an original design that no one else in the world has. If you can show me another robot that is EXACTLY, piece for piece, the same, I'll take back everything I have said.

Chief Delphi has always been a place where students and mentors can come together and share experiences, share designs, and communicate on how to better their knowledge. Lately I have found it to be filled with harsh critical comments which have nothing to do with the design themselves. It shocks me to know that people have started to use CD as a way to bring people down instead of building them up. It seems that we have forgotten the saying "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all"

With all of that aside, I would like to commend you on such a design. It's very well put together, and I love the idea of having an easy-to-use chain tensioner. This is a very nice building block to many robot designs you could invent in the future. Continue the great work! If you follow through with this kind of design as an off-season test platform, I would love to see how it turns out.

Bryan Gallo