I don’t think a “robot teacher” would be a VEXIQ competitor…
But yes, I 100% agree that teachers should not be building robots. While they should be allowed to help their teams troubleshoot problems (within reason, of course), building robots for their students to copy should be off limits.
How about instead tearing one another down, we work towards a solution. It’s hard to tell the adults from the kids in here.
No matter what your feelings are, I think that Lippers are doing a lot for the community, inspiring kids with ideas. There are lots of Lipper bot out there, but I also think the kids are learning a lot more by reverse engineering stuff and looking at those concepts vs figuring it out on their own. At MS state in Indiana, there were many that were similar in overall design to spitfire, but they all had their own flavor because they had to build them on their own and they found better ways to upgrade as they do it.
It obvious there is a group who feel they cross the line. So @FRC973, how about you do your next robot release, but take away any still, close up shots, just do the youtube video? Then after the season, post close up details? Everyone will always have different opinions no matter what you do, but this feels like a good middle ground.
The point is to INSPIRE roboteers. Not win prizes, but start an interest and have them be inspired enough to work towards a STEM (or STEAM) career. I don’t care how they get inspired: via design, via reverse engineering, just building, just driving, nose deep in a 300 page notebook with 64 colors of ink or with twenty seven eight by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. I don’t care how, but the result needs to be INSPIRE.
Reverse engineering from a video takes some level of skill and determination. I have roboteers that are flummoxed by the IKEA like build instructions of the Hero bots. Lots of you are taking high end roboteers. We take the first 20 kids inside the door and turn them into roboteers. It’s a spectrum of abilities that I’m trying to inspire.
I crushed the soul out of our county executive last week. He was waxing on about how great the robots are. “Not the point, the robots are a catalyst. The point is to teach life skills of following an engineering process, communications, strategy, teamwork and most importantly to test and then iterate to refine. I was twenty before I realized that my Mom’s special “spice cake” was a carrot cake with extra spices. Robotics is like that, come and devour the spice cake robot, but get all of the nutrients, the smart life skills. We want to have inspired roboteers going after all the high tech jobs you are trying to bring into the county”.
At first I got the surprised Pikachu face, but then it changed to understanding.
We need to do a better job. There are less than 1000 pro football players, less than 500 pro basketball players. Lord knows how a tiktock influencer makes money, but near as I can tell only a few hundred make serious money. But lets go all in and say sports, content creators, gamers, musicans, etc that can make a living are 500,000 or even a million people. Are the rest of the work force going to just go “Would you like fries with that?”
Thanks @mizdared for the reminder. And with that, I’m off to start working on my big task, starting new teams for next year.
Look, I see that some teams are doing that, but at least in Maryland it is the base bot with little modification to non, The teams that I went up to and asked where they got the robot Idea at states literally told me straight to my face that it was the base bot, I know the internet exists and the fact that some teams did use your ideas and instructions in a allowed way and built off of those, and to those teams I tip my hat too, but like I said, in Maryland, it is just a load of base bots, and it really hurts the spirit of the competition in my eyes, yes I know that Inspiration is a really important part of engineering, and I know you had good intentions, I did not mean for it to come off as me attacking, and I will admit I was in the wrong, but I just feel that some teams are taking this in a way that is going to be hurtful to competition in a few years, again, I had little time to edit this, so if it comes off in a attacking manner I would like to give my apologies, just wanted to give a take from a current first year VexIQ team.
Look, I agree that that is fine, but at least at my competitions I have seen a lot of exact copy’s with nothing accept color change, (which if they changed it to purple I totally understand), I have no issues with your team, and I want to make that clear, I had a few misconceptions and I would like to apologize, but I just do not agree with exact copies.
No, If you actually use your brain, or even try to holecount this, you will learn a few things. First, although these pictures look very detailed, it is incredibly hard to get this exactly holecounted, or even close. Also, this robot is not perfect. It is a great starting point for many teams and allows them to work through their own issues. If you were somehow able to holecount this exactly, It would not necessarily be able to win a competition. All high ranking robots have switched to using one motor catapults and one motor intake to make room for a high hang. This design features dual motors for both of those positions. Thus this bot is no longer a leading design.
I can say that we are a team that has tried to make very original bots since we entered the VRC competition. The first year we qualified for worlds because another team double qualified and we were second in the state for skills. This year though our original ideas caused us a lot of trouble and we did quite poorly in all of our events.
We thought we should only do original ideas, but you wont get anywhere unless you accept that someone else came up with a better idea and use it rather than only use your own ideas. The space race was made possible by a bunch of different people using and adapting others ideas, not one person with a bunch of perfect ones.
No… this is nowhere near plagarism, as i said in my last comment its simply accepting that someone came up with a really good design and copying the base of it. But you still have to work out the majority of your problems so they are learning as intended. Dang I feel like doom slayer shooting down all these stupid, poorly written arguments.
I completely agree with you and have for the whole time but I have a stubborn team captain who frequently accuses me of having no originality. I would like to be able to outvote his decisions but our other teammates are good friends with him and don’t challenge his arguments.
Well, if you guys dont make it to world because “an original design” is the only thing your team will want, then blame it on them. Its not your fault. I would also ask to be moved to a different team, but I get wanting to stay regardless.
There are two sides this issue and to how the Vex program is set up.
First side is from the teams’ side or the student’s side. Again, I think most teams that have a “similar” concept that performs well put in a lot of work to make it consistently score high. They probably had to employ some sort of engineering process. I wouldn’t label any of these teams cheaters. And I think most of these teams with this “copy” wasn’t their first design. They probably tried making fling and some other designs that failed or didn’t perform to expectations. And discovered things that worked and didn’t work and finally went with this so called “copied” design. Did it fast track their process having one to be inspired by ? Yes. But one can not blame the team for doing research and finding out what works and utilizing the concept in their final robot.
The second side is the adult “guided” side of the equation and how some adults are pushing the boundary of what is considered adult “guided” learning. Vex has stated in the past that no child is a born engineer. So if an adult does not show the principles of how the choo choo mechanism works, it is very difficult for the student to come up with a choo choo mechanism independently. But VEX has also made it very clear, that the adult should not provide a solution to the challenge. The student needs to figure out how to utilize a taught concept and incorporate into their solution.
There is definitely a distinct line between inspiration vs providing a solution.
For the above example. I would say this is an inspirational video not a solution. It shows a concept. But there is not enough information that shows how it is a solution from a build standpoint and how well the robot actually can score and whether it can score consistently even. And the main thing is this design is designed by students and not adults.
Now for this video I would say it’s definitely crossing the line. Since it is essentially showing a solution to the challenge. Close to max score. It would be very difficult to say it isn’t providing a solution to students in every shape and form. And using the argument that it hasn’t showed max score or high hang would be a weak argument against not showing a solution.
I think mentors, coaches, parents, and adults need to always keep in mind the core principles of Vex. In the end it’s always student centric. If the adults get too involved in providing “solutions” to the students, in the end it hurts the students and defeats the whole purposed of the vex program. It’s up to us as the adult to guide the students and it’s really the adults to be blamed if teams all come out with “copies” of the same robots. So all the adults have a big responsibility in keeping this program a great one but please don’t blame the kids. They are all working hard and would never call them cheaters on this specific topic.
Cheers.
I figured this video hopefully will end this thread in a high note. It’s a great reminder of why kids do robotics. Why teaches, coaches, and mentors work with these kids. And why we are all on this forum helping each other.
Cheers.
I agree 100%.
But let’s let the kids provide the inspiration. They can do it!
Having adults provide the solutions and inspiration takes that opportunity away from the students. If we trust in out students and give them the opportunity, they will amaze us, and each other, every time.
I would honestly like to hear what @DanMantz has to say about this and how they are going to combat this at worlds, personally I feel that steps should be taken to prevent this at worlds, but this thread is a tribute to the fact that a lot of people feel differently.
There is a good chunk of teams from China teams have been blatantly copying each other (and selling) designs for years. Has anything really been done to stop this over the years? Why would they start policing how you make your robots now based on youtube videos. The REC isn’t going to be able to say one way or another at worlds how you created your robot on your own or if you peg hole counted off something offline.
I think what this thread highlights is that the HERO bot is great for beginners, but there should maybe be a second more advanced hero bot or something teaching more advanced concepts (see new gen 2 kits parts, Cam, spool and rope, linear sliders). Give the teachers more stuff to teach for the kids to learn on their own, less reliability on youtube. It’s the kids that are dumped in a room and left to go figure it out on their own, are the ones who most likely are doing the most peg hole counting.
I must say, I highly doubt that the conveyer belt bot was built by only students. My team attempted to copy that design, and even with a contact over at caution tape and in depth photos, we were not able to build it and keep it in specs. Also, to suggest that the lipperverse bots were the first to make the dual catapult design would be false. They were just the first ones that widely popularized the design with in depth videos on how it functioned.
I do agree with this one, but it is almost impossible to police that kind of stuff since its over in china. They have their own head of tournaments and stuff. The fact that its culture is also so overintensive and that precision things like driving matter so much that building a robot, if its avoidable will be skipped. Because teams in China do blatantly copy each other which is against the rules, but the lipperverse bots arent this.
An incredible event to have at Worlds would be an Ad libitum division.
Construct a robot right there at worlds and compete with it. The robot and parts wouldn’t leave the assembly area.
That could be the highest quality award and remove all doubt of a teams accumulated skill over the season. 
Ironically the club that I help mentor at, the kids or students there are generally better builders than the coaches even. So I think it’s a bit of a logical fallacy to assume if a specific team can’t replicate an idea, that it must have been made by adults. Any successful idea or design needs many many reiterations and requires a lot of testing to make it work. I have a feeling this team must have reiterated their design many times over to get a design that works.
Below is another team that used a similar concept. Might not be as efficient as the Cautiontape one and has some issues with ball loading, but it shows the principle works for them as well. Since they also have a working conveyor, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that they must have had adults built it also.
2022 - VEX IQ ES Math Division - Indiana VEX Robotics State Championship Streaming - YouTube
Cheers