I quite literally searched up “catapult” and it came up with tons of results. Maybe next time try looking first before telling someone they are wrong?:
https://www.vexforum.com/t/how-does-a-t-fling-catapult-work/98793/6
… and many more (I don’t want to clutter up the forums any more than necessary).
As one of the designers of Spitfire, I want to clarify an important misconception: There are NO instructions for Spitfire. None. They don’t exist. As for the model, I would think that would be referring to a physical model, not one in a video because the green box says it’s fine to get inspiration from videos. If there is no physical model and no instructions, then I don’t see where the violation is coming from.
Also, it is harder to copy piece for piece a robot from a
than one might think.
While you can see some things, there’s a lot that you can’t see. The biggest thing you can’t see here is the code. This is not an easy robot to build, even with guidance from pictures/videos, and coding it is also a major hurdle for anyone wanting a competitive Spitfire.
You could compare it to the meta robot in Next Level. All the robots at worlds were the same, and no one complained about them all copying each other. The 1st ranked robot was usually the same design as rank 20, yet one was so much better, because they thoroughly implemented the design process. They “stole from the best, and invented the rest”.