The Ethics of Leaking Robot Designs

[Animesh]

Let’s say we have 2 teams: Team A and Team B.

Team A and Team B are both powerhouses that are friendly with each other so they occasionally share small aspects of the robot with each other. However, when Team B was sharing a specific design to Team A, they mentioned explicitly to the person that this was not something that they wanted to be leaked.

Fast forward a bit, and let’s say there’s another student on Team A who publically leaks “their” design which was really Team’s B. Would that be regarded as ethical because there might be some small modifications made to the design + the student was not told to leak the design explicitly.

[typeusernamehere]

I don’t know why Team A would or should feel the need to take and then essentially release Team B’s design. Seems like a breach of trust to me.

[aaronfang]

bruh

[jjsessa]

Why is this even a thread? Just send your leaks with

[RubyIAm]

Because Team B explicitly shared it with them?

In my opinion, communication is key here. Chances are, if Team A and Team B are in frequent contact, Team B would know that Team A would be taking or modifying their design. So asking for permission would be the best thing to do on Team A’s part, and would really be a rather casual affair if the inter-team communication between the two is as smooth as you imply it is. If they say no, they say no.

[Animesh]

[Mike_Schreiber]

if you told another team about a good idea, it would be silly to expect them to not use that idea. Steal from the best.

If you then want to dictate to a team that they can’t show pictures of their own robot in public you are in the wrong.

[heatblast016]

ow

[GoalkeeperBoss]

Aww who hurt you

[troy_dietz]

The student on team A:

[ijensen]

I am a bit confused here. Are there teams who do this? Most of what I have seen is more like Friend A and Friend B who are respectively on Team A and Team B, who may share designs between themselves (I will be honest, I am guilty(?) of this, but not people I play in the same regional with). But in this case, I have never seen anyone leak a shared design.

[Maximillian]

I’ve found it much easier to not worry about leaks when you just preemptively leak your entire robot in a Chief Delphi thread.

[DanielPlotas]

This is the first step to eliminating collusion of the high-tier teams.
Leaks level the playing field and inspire everyone.

@Maximillian

I’ve found it much easier to not worry about leaks when you just preemptively leak your entire robot in a Chief Delphi thread.

In our experience, its easier to build robots that aren’t worth copying.

[RockRGI]

We share ideas with a couple of teams in the area. Anything that we don’t want shared we specifically ask them not to share it. Anything we definitely don’t want out there we simply keep to ourselves until our first competition.

Rarely do we have any cutting edge tech that anyone would want to simply copy anyway.