Sharing Designs

FIRST General Forum
#29

I know that. M.Krass went off on a tangent asserting that protecting proprietary information somehow means that you profit at someone elses expense (a real world situation).

Some of the things we experience, and some of the culture in FIRST translates into engineering / real world experiences and culture, and some do not.

The competition aspect of FIRST puts a lot of energy into the program. Over the years I have seen teams attempt to do off season projects (work on a shifting transmission design, or take the robot places to show other people about FIRST) and sometimes NOBODY shows up - nobody is interested.

The competition between teams is important. What happens before and after ship date is like two different worlds. New students get to ship date and think, wow, this has been great. We have to tell them ā€œyou aint seen nothing yetā€.

Look at all the teams that take so much pride in 100% student designed and built robots. Why is that? Ownership.

I know that FIRST is not a robot building contest. And I know if you take the robot competition out of FIRST the program would fizzle and die.

Being competitive is a part of human nature. The standard in FIRST is similar to what happens in the real world. People design things, and keep it secret until they are ready to release their product to the market. Then everyone gets to see what they have been up to, and if possible, knock-off products start showing up 6 months to a year later.

Same in FIRST. Many teams openly share what they have done in the past, but want to keep this years design under wraps until ship date, or the 1st regional.

I dont see any conflict there.

#30

ā€¦a team forgets to plug in their battery before a match and your team, competing against them, realizes this. You can keep that information to yourself and win the match as a result; or you can share that information, potentially still win and earn increased qualifying points because your opponentā€™s score will be greater than 0. Profit isnā€™t synonymous with earning money, Ken.

Experiences in FIRST are not meant to translate into the real world, theyā€™re meant to change it.

If Chrysler figures out how to make an efficient, affordable hydrogen-powered vehicle, they can choose to keep that technology to themselves and charge consumers a premium for it or they can make that technology available to all manufacturers.

One choice letā€™s their shareholders buy a nice new house and a big screen TV. The other keeps our planet inhabitable for another 1000 years.

#31

I find that it doesnā€™t help to tell someone exactly how to do something, but rather itā€™s better to get them thinking about how to do it. Part of FIRST is the journey and then the final product. Itā€™s kind of like the whole discussion on whether or not a team should throw a game for their sister teamā€¦ a championship trophy is just a piece of plastic without the journey behind it. Sharing design ideas is the exact same thing. We should strive to make our competition better in order to make us make ourselves better!

#32

or they can license the technology to other car manufactures for a reasonable fee, use the money to continue funding their (excellent) R&D department, enjoy the fruits of their labor, and still save the world.

competition and cooperating are both important, and there is a balance between them. Our patent laws give reseach companies protected competition rights for a limited period of time, then their inventions become public domain.

Xerox is a good example. The competition for a good document copy system drove the companys founder to invest his own time and money to invent xerography. Xerox enjoyed a monopoly under their patent, and created a new product line under the protection they had.

When the patent expired (forced cooperation) the competition flooded in like a tidal wave, which drove the prices way down, and forced Xerox to become far more innovative than they had been.

It works both ways. If you take away the competiton we will loose incentive to try new things. If you take away the cooperation then the state of the art of science and technology will become stagnent, because companys will keep the results of their research as trade secrets instead of applying for patents.

Same with FIRST - we need both, the competition and the cooperation.

#33

This is a personal issue of mine, Iā€™m very open to sharing information, though none of the other students on my team are open to it.

What are you losing by sharing a design? Originality? Is that secret design of yours exactly what the winning key in all 71 robots have? (no its not PVC, the other secret)

What are you gaining? Your probably gonna get feed back, constructive critism, ideas to help make your robot better. And by showing what you got ahead of time people know at a competition to make sure to go and check your robot out more in detail. Its all publicity, if people know you got a product theres one step in the marketing process that youā€™ve got done. As for more specifics, you donā€™t need to say what kind of sprocket size you have with all your chains, you donā€™t need to go into detail about it. A picture (or movie) is worth 1000 words.

Why not? Youā€™ve got nothing to lose (and if your saying originality, start looking at the stuff the patent office gave us in the kit)

i dont know if this ā€œtangentā€ is what the original thread was made for, but it seemed fitting, maybe if the discussion was split? Mods feel free to move it

#34

Disclaimer:
The views expressed below do not necessarily reflect those of the rest of my team.

Now thenā€¦

Personally, I believe engineering is not simply about applying this concept, and building that design. Engineering fundamentally comes down to problem solving, and if the students canā€™t get excited and inspired by the problem solving process because someone has spoon fed them a solution, then nobody wins.

Give a man a fish, heā€™ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, heā€™ll eat for a lifetime.

One of the most remarkable aspects of FIRST is the variety of different designs seen at the competitions. Without fail, every possible design that we brainstormed and ruled out for whatever reason will have been implemented, and in a way that we may have thought could never work. Yet it does. Itā€™s a learning process throughout, and seeing how everyone else solved the problem after youā€™ve come up with your own solution is all the more valuable.

In my mind, FIRST is kind of like school. Itā€™s here to teach students about engineering, and inspire them to consider making a career in the fields of science and technology. When I was in school, I learned a whole lot more doing something on my own and comparing it with the solutions and methods of other students than I ever would have if they simply told me how they solved the problem before I started.

I donā€™t believe anyone is saying that information should never be shared. Itā€™s simply a matter of when. Allow teams to experience the problem solving stage without influencing them. Necessity is the mother of invention - but if you no longer need anything because something has been given to you, then thereā€™s a loss of creativity. And sure, you can argue that simply improving someone elseā€™s solution could make it worthwhile, but I stand by the argument that you should come up with your own solution first.

#35

Perfect! This is exactly what I was trying to say through my posts earlier, though unfortunately I came across much harsher.

Nice job Kevin! :slight_smile:

#36

The problem with your analogy is that a large portion of these students (at least the ones I work with) donā€™t know what a fish is, that fish are good to eat, how to recognize a fish when they see one, and how to catch one if they know all of the above. This isnā€™t about a student trying to choose between a V-belt and a timing belt, itā€™s about them not even knowing that such things as belts exist. This is very common to rookie team members and to rookie teams. Assuming that rookie mentors are all MIT-trained NASA engineers who custom fabricate motorcycles in their spare time is a bad idea, too. We helped a mentor for a small team last year who barely knew which end of a screwdriver to hold. The girls at his school wanted a team, so he did his best, and several PNW teams helped them finish their robot (on Thursday of the tournament).

I will continue to answer any question about technology, approaches, strategy, or ā€œhow are you going to do thisā€ that anyone on CD asks in good faith and that I think I can meaningfully address. I think it is how I can best advance the goals of FIRST.

#37

well, they reflect some of our views quite well :slight_smile:

Woodie once said he wanted to make our brains hurt. And I donā€™t think he was talking about getting beaned by 198 grams of foamā€¦

#38

Here, here (or is it hear, hear? - oh well). This is another one of those discussions that occur every year.

I agree that the struggle to solve the problem is part of what is great about FIRST. There are a lot of great designs from past years that the teams can learn from - how to build drive trains, arms, grippers, transmissions, etc. These mechanisms can be modified and tweaked to make a basic shooter for this year - thereā€™s no reason to give away detailed shooter designs.

Thereā€™s a great saying: ā€œyou can fight without ever winning, but you can never win without a fight.ā€ This doesnā€™t literally mean you actually need to fist-fight - it means that in order to gain something, you need to struggle a bit. Similar to ā€œno pain, no gainā€. Iā€™m all for letting every team struggle on their own; not because I donā€™t want them to beat me on the field - itā€™s because I want them to maximize their learning process.

If you build something that someone else designed, you learn what that mechanism does. By being forced to come up with the design on your own, you not only learn WHY it works (which is also important), but you also learn how difficult it can be to solve these problems, and why a good problem solving process is needed, and why research is important, and why getting an education is important - these are the major goals of FIRST.

#39

Iā€™m torn between my inner hippie and my practical knowledge of engineering when it comes to IP debates, so Iā€™ll save that for another day (generally I lean towards consumer rights - put a price on IP so companies strive for it, but limit the power of a patent so as not to shut out the competition).

However, when it comes to FIRST, I think people are overprotective of their ideas to some extent. For the most part, the brilliance in engineering in FIRST is in the implementation, not the raw concept. Our robot is shooting balls with a spinning wheel - not this yearsā€™ most unique idea, but there are a few things we think we do differently than the competition. When people go on Delphi and try to talk in spy-like secrecy about the fact that they are using a spinning shooter, I just scratch my head.

Two, the build season is 6 weeks long. Almost every team out there will be working on something until the last day or so. If you donā€™t have your concept ironed out in the first couple days and you donā€™t have a working drivetrain in a week or two, you are behind schedule and will REALLY be in a bind. If I were to post my brilliant ideas on Delphi right now, in week three, no one would be able to implement them in time - at least not the same way I did. So in a way, FIRST IP is protected because of the limited period of time to duplicate design.

FIRST management has also consistently given nudging in the direction of more disclosure. This year every technical award winner will be asked to write an entry for a FIRST book - and I guarantee FIRST teams will be its #1 buyer.

Lastly, if Iā€™m unsettled about propriety during the build season, I am absolutely dumb-founded by propriety during the off season. Iā€™ve been at off season events, seen something cool, asked about it, and been told ā€œno, thatā€™s a secret.ā€ I canā€™t see any defense for thisā€¦itā€™s not like Iā€™m being force fed a design and not learning about my robot - Iā€™ve recognized a feature that intrigues me and want to learn more.

Competition is what draws people into FIRST. Cooperation is what keeps them there.

#40

Long time reader, first time posting. :slight_smile:

Part of the problem I see with the idea of sharing designs follows along the ā€œslippery slopeā€ argument. Where does it stop? If we are going to provide kids with ideas why not designs? Why not the (custom) parts? If we give them the parts, why donā€™t we assemble it for them? Maybe we should just outsource the design/assembly and order a robot? :slight_smile: They can still compete with it. If the students arenā€™t designing things, what are they doing?

In the end, maybe a team doesnā€™t have the best design, or the best idea, but next year they will learn more from their experiences when they can look back and discover how and why they made that decision. Now, with that said, I donā€™t think there is a single team within FIRST that wouldnā€™t bend over backwards to help any rookie team to design/implement their own ideas, but giving them your design would take away that aspect of the learning process from a team that probably needs it most.

Every team has their own philosophy, strategy and attitude. Every design decision involves some cost-vs-benefit consequence and this need to be evaluated by each team. What is ā€œbestā€ for one team may not be right for another team. Help people learn to solve problems; donā€™t give them the solution.

I also wanted to mention that yes, FIRST is about getting students excited about math, science and engineering (first and foremost). What is MORE exciting than a group of students designing that small competitive advantage (on their own) that takes them to the national championship?

I havenā€™t been with FRIST for as long as many of the people that I work with, but I have noticed an amazing trend in my 3 years: The more you expect from the students, the more they will accomplish.

#41

Update: Here is a a ā€œproofā€ of my above logic:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?&action=single&picid=13260

#42

This isnā€™t proof of anything. These three teams chose to work together (and have done so for 2 years now?) and design their robots together. I see this as a good thing because the more people you have looking at a problem the more ideas there will be to solve it. It is not about copying an idea, but more collectively deciding on what they think is best.

I think this thread has strayed from its original purpose of a place for teams to share their information, but thatā€™s what this entire site is for. Chief Delphi is not just a place for people to talk about robotics, but its a place where people can show off their accomplishments and spread ideas and information. Case point Dewalts and banebots. MANY teams use these transmissions and if it were not for CD then these things would have taken allot longer to spread throughout the FIRST community. If you feel that you do not wish to share information, then donā€™t. But please do not criticize or get angry when people do share information. There will always be people willing to share information and ideas. And CD is a good place for them to share them.

#43

Eldarionā€“ā€œleaving the matches up to random chance!ā€

More Driverā€™s skill than random chance.

#44

I have some ā€œgripesā€ about ā€œteasersā€. Sure teasers are great the first few weeks of the build season. But why when its week 6.9 are we still having teasers??? If you can change your design in ~24 hours you shoud be national champions, but let me askā€¦is keeping your design SECRETIVE even after shipping really worth it? Sure, I can see it for the suprise at the regional, but when teams are still posting teasers even after ship, I feel is just plain rediculous.
IMHO, I would rather show my idea in week 4.5ish then let the general public constructively criticize me and hopefully get some ideas to better OUR design. I know FIRST has way to many honest and gracious teams to ā€œstealā€ my design. Granted in the past once Iā€™ve seen a robot on Delphi, Iā€™ve said ā€œwhy didnā€™t I think of thatā€ and usually take notes for next season. I have never said or heard anyone sayā€¦ā€œwow that bot looks great, lets change our design because of itā€.

Let me know your opinions

#45

Ken is on target again!!!

We help rookie and veteran teams by sharing info. especially if it enables those who cannot otherwise complete the necessary task. For example we figured out how to modify globe motors by milling off .25" of the housing on the gearbox. We then remove the outer layer of planetary gears to increase the speed to over 400rpm. Now we tell people about this because it helps some teams who might otherwise spend many hours or even days coming up with an equivalent which might be expensive, heavier and/or bulkier.
Giving this info away doesnā€™t put our chances in jeopardy; other teams would have to copy almost everything else we have to do that.
Having the exact same robot on different teams still has variable outcome possibilities due to the human factor and strategy. Case in point:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?s=&action=single&picid=13260&direction=DESC&sort=date&perrow=4&trows=3&quiet=Verbose

Hereā€™s our bot by the way.
http://media.putfile.com/Team-329-ball-pickup

#46

This is not NEARLY the same thing as this thread is aboutā€¦ I think that alot of people got offended by alot of other peoples posts, and because of that we end up a with close-minded arguement in wake of an openminded discussion.

The bottom line isā€¦ If every single team had the same robot, then there wouldnā€™t be much of a competition at all, would there? The difference between showing a team a finished result and giving the team a finished design is that with the laterā€¦ the team actually learns something. Itā€™s the same reason that they donā€™t give me the answers to my chem problems with the questions. They just give me a final result, and have me figure the rest out on my own. It helps me learn more, which is part of what FIRST is about. My team prides ourselves on being student built, and if we were offered a professional designā€¦ I doubt weā€™d take it. This brings us back to human nature as a wholeā€¦ Our will to compete insures that there will never be a Startrek Utopia where everybody shared everything.

#47

This discussion really is about cooperation/competition , or FIRSTs ā€œco-optitionā€. Its about helping others without giving away your stratigic (sp?) advantage.

If a team, other than my own, asks for help I will help them with THIER design. I wonā€™t design it for them, for I believe that the process by which they come up with thier strategy / design is as important as the design itself.

We, in 1058, donā€™t share our designs before the competition. We will explain how (and why) we designed our robot the way we did at the competition so that they may learn from what we did and apply it in the future, if they so desire.

One of the things I try to teach the kids is that this is a competition, and the goal of a competition is to win. However, it is what you do to achieve that goal that defines the person, and not achieving the goal itself.

#48