Every middle school competition we have been to has had Ben Lipper robots at it and they dominate the competition with the Scorpion or Scorpion lite robot. Are Ben Lipper robots and you tube destroying original engineering ideas? It is not at all original and is plagiarism. How can Vex combat this ? The new rule itself isn’t enough to stop the kids from copying. Obviously it is easy to win when your robot has been made for you by college age engineer
Do you mean that the robots were exactly the same as Ben Lipper’s, or do you mean that they were the same type of design (180 mech)? Did you or your coach report them? It’s unrealistic to expect mostly parent volunteers to be able to tell that a robot is copied from the internet, so it’s effectively the competitors’ responsibility to report rule-breaking teams.
Hi Lbryner, welcome to the forum.
So this isn’t a Ben Lipper problem. He’s an easy target for people to attack. His channel and his company actually has a lot of good things going on. He does a series on how to figure out game strategy, how to design robots to do the strategy, lots build techniques, etc. All things that teams are suggested to do. He is the baby in the bathwater.
The actual problem is twofold. One is the RECF. They have glorified the Worlds Championship as the greatest event in the world. Their mission is
“The Robotics Education & Competition Foundation’s global mission is to provide every educator with competition, education, and workforce readiness programs to increase student engagement in science, technology, engineering, math, and computer science.”
gets lost in their need for funding. Donors want excitement, so Worlds it is.
The second part is that parents have bought into the worlds hype. So rather than
“sparks interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by engaging students in hands-on … robotics programs.”
and trying to expose their roboteer to STEM things, they want to win Worlds at all costs.
So the fix is super easy: Don’t have Worlds. Don’t have a structure that has events past your local area. So no US, no North East Regional, no State. Problem solved in two years. Nobody will care to make super robots or copy super robots.
And that tosses a different baby out with the bath water, the other great things RECF does, most of their sponsors will bail.
So the rule this year about not “pin counting” robots has come into play. And many roboteers have followed. They have used other robots as design ideas. So while they all may “look alike” there should be improvements or changes that the teams have made.
During inspection they may have been asked. During the pit interview the judges may also ask.
But remember that there are limited successful designs. The scorpion is one, there are 3 others that are popular.
But @60_Percent_C_Channel is correct, the mentor/coach should say something and that will get the ball rolling.
Also Ben Lipper is play blamed like what was said by Foster above many Chinese and organization teams actually created and published these robots first another way to have robot not be copied is to have only the world championship published and live streamed and also the state/region championships be published and live streamed but those be immediately before worlds and all on the same day or two although they should run at different times because of time zones and then published after all are finished
I think both Foster and Vexiscool27 did a great job addressing the Vex/RECF specific issue here.
I’ll reiterate a broader idea - there will always be solution convergence. Every road that has to cross a river has a bridge and they all look very much alike. That’s not because the engineers were lazy or cheating, it’s because it’s the best solution to the problem.
@Lbryner @60_Percent_C_Channel You know what one of the worst things to do is? Assume.
Just because teams do well and lots of robots look alike, doesn’t mean they copied it. The last Lipper bot came out months after the internet was flooded with that design. Assuming you are a student, did you talk to teams with these bots and ask them if they copied piece by piece, do you have proof before making accusations? Interviews and Notebooks can help distinguish these things for the EP to see.
While the new rules are great, this is highlighting exactly what is wrong with it as well. People just assume and start filing violations because everyone else’s robots are better than yours. At this point, almost everyone is going to have a very similar robot now or by states, the meta went there real fast, so now everyone will just start filing violations because they assume they cheated.
I’m fully aware of that. That’s why my first sentence was
I apologize if I didn’t make it clear that reporting these teams should only be done if there is reasonable suspicion. I have also in the past mentioned my distaste for assuming that all teams with meta bots break rules in the Meta game killing thread.
Offering an alternative solution to this problem.
I’ve co-coached FLL in Elementary school alongside an amazing teacher for many years. My kids switch to Vex IQ when they enter middle school, and back to First Robotics in high school. I’ve coached MS VEX IQ intermittently with this year being my last.
Every time I switch back to coaching VEX IQ, it is always very frustrating as there are many problems with the program, including numerous conflicts of interest.
I would like to recognize RECF for trying to address the issues over the years, although the results thus far still leaves a lot of room for improvement. When I first coached Vex IQ, there wasn’t a lot of focus on Core Values and Student-centered policy. So RECF has come a long way.
Essentially, the ultimate solution to this problem is to restructure the Award Qualifications to State Championships, and to World.
The qualifying awards to State/World should only be Excellence Award winners. If there are 6 spots, then only Excellence winners 1st-6th should advance to State/World. First place Skills and Teamwork Champions can still be recognized with a trophy, but they do not advance to State/World unless they also are Excellence award winners. Teams that focus on robot performance alone by any means will not be rewarded.
With the above model, teams will strive to achieve Excellence in their design process in order to advance, and will naturally discourage copying of robot ideas, and the focus will shift to originality. Even if teams have similar mechanism ideas, the build, and unique features will differ. The engineering notebook and interview process will also determine and filter out teams that spent time designing instead of copying.
The model above is essentially a similar structure to FLL. In order to qualify to World, a team must earn First place Champions, Second, etc. The robots you see at FLL World are very interesting since they are unique. FLL also has a research project component, but that’s another portion of the rubric. Vex IQ used to also have project, that became optional, and now completely removed from the tournaments. Most kids like only the robot side of tournaments, which probably contributed to RECF removing this component.
I am still hopeful that RECF will eventually figure out what best works for the program that fosters originality and creativity in the kids that participate in Vex IQ.
It isn’t directly plagiarism because they have to change their robot and they have different game strategies like picking a beam to the standoff first. So it is technically not plagiarism and one more thing. He allows people to copy him he wants to be copied to help inexperienced kids know what this is going to be like.
I am not familiar with VexIQ, but in V5RC this wouldn’t be feasible due to how many spots there are at Worlds. I think that even with this plan, teams would end up building a “meta” robot because it is the best way to play the game. That being said, there is a difference between just building a meta robot and understanding how one works. My team went through this this season, and now we have improved our robot a lot. This will also improve our notebook be better due to the testing that we have now
I think the sentiment is already being reflected in that I am seeing the Design Award and the Innovate Award qualifying for State in our local tournaments.
I agree, RECF is working towards elevating the judged awards by qualifying more of them to World. As we saw last year, more judged awards ranked higher than Skills champion. Definitely a step in the right direction last year.
This year however, with the pilot of the Conference Model–some states have stepped backwards again. RECF split the World spots equally between the Conference Championship and the regular State Championship. For a state with 6 spots, this year, twice as many “robot performance” winners will earn a spot compared to Judged: 1 Excellence and 2 Teamwork Champs. The same 6 spots, last year, would have qualified even amounts–3 robot performance and 3 judged.
For as long as Teamwork and Skills champions are allowed to advance to World, the issue with clone bots will not be resolved. Because there exists a direct correlation with robot performance alone and advancing.
Even though RECF has placed more restrictions in the manual this year that questionable robots will be scrutinized, the reality is it will be very difficult to disqualify a robot without solid evidence.
The manual states that organizations are not to have clone robots within, yet I’ve seen exactly that. The manual also says that taking inspiration from another robot is allowed but there needs to be iterative modifications to make it one’s own. Most volunteer judges aren’t experienced or experts enough to determine when a robot has gone through enough modifications to be different.
And 180s are really good robots. How can you expect teams not to build them?
I agree with this!
My team, me as a coach included, have learned and been inspired a lot by Ben Lipper and several other youtubers who shared their knowledge about VEX IQ robot designs, programming tips and analysis of game challenges.
What’s destroying VEX IQ competitions are the institutions based teams sweeping through local (and not so local) tournaments with the same robot design and programming features. Take a look at these 2 robots from the same institution at different tournaments. Can you believe that they are designed and built by different teams of this institution. Can you tell which one is a MS team and which one is ES team?
I did witness when the ES robot broke after one match, the kids were cluelessly watching their parents/mentos troubleshooting/fixing it.
I coached 1 MS VEX IQ team and 1 ES VEX IQ team for 4 years combined, volunteered as judges at local and Worlds events and being to VEX Worlds with the MS team in 2018. I wanted to say that prioritizing judged awards has other problems too.
Most judges are volunteers (parents of high school FLL teams or parents of other VEX teams who mostly just chaperons or to fulfill the volunteering hours requirements ) and many don’t have deep knowledge about the VEX programs or even STEM background at all.
I am a software engineer for decades and coached VEX IQ for 4 years but when I was assigned to interview VEX V5 teams for the first time, I was overwhelmed. At VEX IQ tournaments in recent years, judges stopped coming to the pit area at the local and regional tournament and they don’t really have the visibility of “student centered” vs “mentor centered” behaviors.
Some suggested that only Excellence Award should be a qualifying award. I think the Excellence Award should add another criteria that evaluate a team’s performance that can not be rehearsed ahead of the time.
The teams that are truly excellent should have the ability to troubleshoot on the spot.
Remove one part of their robot or one part of their code, can they troubleshoot and fix the problem within limited time? Can they build a mechanism (drivetrain, claw, 4bar lift, etc) with event supplied parts on the spot within a time limit? Can they develop an effective strategy with a robot designed and built by the event partner on the spot?
They even have the same two white circles on the brain.
Just to pitch in, because of issues like this, the league our team competes in in China (ACAMIS) qualifies based on awards in order of excellence → design → innovation …, then skills champions, and finally tournament champions, which seems to have help alleviate this issue a bit.
@CRM Thanks for your feedback. While I understand your concern about the conference model, let me shed some light on why that was tested this season. Conferences are school based and they police themselves (related to dealing with code of conduct and student centered issues). They are able to set rules specific to their teams and how they operate within the conference (as long as nothing directly goes against RECF policies). Because of this, we see more authentic, student centered behavior which was another intended target. Sure it may mean more objective awards than subjective awards are handed out in those instances but we can be assured that teams winning those awards and their work aren’t being questioned as other teams may be. We know the teams that win the qualifying awards have done things the right way.
How can you know this? Do you have a RECF representive checking things every meeting? From my experiane, it is the school teams who have the suspiciously similar robots, and often are the ones who cannot explain their robot or how they got to it (or have eerily similar responses).
I don’t completely understand how the conferences work. Could you make a post explaining it all for us Fourm members?