On photographs and FVC competitions...

[Billfred]

The topic came up in the Toronto Championships thread about the lack of photos of 1114's robot. I'll copy over the main discussion:

Originally Posted by 1885.blake

Steve, This ability to modify bots between ccompetitions (or even between matches) is one of the elephants in the corner of the FVC "room".

Would you want to ask any and everyone who has a picture of the 1114 Toronto Bot to not post it anywhere on the internet?

Would you want to ask all teams that saw the bot (and all the other bots), and are going to participate in another Championship, to not use any ideas they picked up from other teams during the Toronto Championship? Or is it OK to only use ideas from teams that didn't do as well as 1114?

In the exreme, would you want to urge teams not to look in textbooks to get ideas instead of thinking them up on their own (of course not, but I am exaggerating to make a point)?

I suspect that the Genie is out of the bottle any time a team participates in a Championship, a scrimmage, a practice, an exhibition/demo, etc.

I suggest that trying to keep 1114's Toronto bot hidden from all teams that were not at the Toronto Championship (after exposing it to all the teams and all the cameras that were there) is not going to work.

Isn't there a better alternative that involves bragging about the cleverness in the current bot and then building an even better one for 1114's next competition?

Maybe this is a topic for a new thread?

Blake

Now, I know for a fact that such redesigning happens--several robots I saw at Orangeburg looked completely different (and strikingly similar to Orangeburg champion 171 (now 1539)) in Atlanta.

Is there a difference between sharing designs in FRC and copying them from a photograph in FVC?

Will this result in triplets or quadruplets or septuplets by Atlanta, only fielded by unaffiliated teams?

Is it possible to expect a team's design won't be copied once it's seen in open competition?