Tell that to Team Overdrive from two years ago. I’m still trying to figure out some components of their robot.
yes. china had a copy of a design that was on youtube. i saw that down there.
I can say right now, this is going to be an even bigger issue this year. This game is SOOOOO simular to FTCs game from 4 years ago quadratic something. There is one design that i will not say that will be copied by many teams.
Quad Quandary (my first ever robotics game).
-Cody
that is correct
but even if there already IS a “winning/dominant” design
teams would still need to adjust to the “up” part of the competition 
think this will be a BIG factor after the first few seasons
See, the beauty if robotics is that it is a balance to designing a robot, programming it, and driving it… Everyone is complaining about other people stealing their design, so why not retaliate by becoming even better in the other two areas? Find some radical approach to programming, and you can one-up the teams copying you… Practice driving more, or even better, simplify driving so the drivers don’t have to be as skilled…
I personally hate seeing copies… When I told my older brother about it, he quickly corrected me, and told me that that was the real world… The only way to truly combat that is to just stay ahead of your competition… And in this context, that means staying ahead of yourself…
I’ve deleted some posts in this thread that were “off the reservation.” Please keep this discussion constructive, or I’ll close it.
Remember to be professional. If you don’t have something nice to say… go somewhere else, please.
Thanks,
John
Hate people copying your winning design?
Make yours better in response. Make yours faster, lighter, stronger. Get some more drive practice. Continuous improvement is key to winning, not coming out of the gate with the best robot initially.
That robot that copies yours, just might be your alliance partner that takes you to a Championship win. Don’t let the copiers discourage you from sharing ideas. You’re allowed to be a little flattered, of course, but your response shouldn’t be “well, let’s just keep everything under wraps this year”. Better robots inspire more people, and if your design inspires a team to try something similar, maybe you won’t end up World Champions, but you’ll have made someone else more successful.
Copying is good.
The object you’re referencing, which I’ll keep secret so a motivated team can have some fun for themselves, is a fairly basic kinematic linkage that’s existed for centuries. With a mechanical background, many will probably build it. Even if it is copied, teams learning about how these linkages work will do more good than the harm to the first team that competes with it.
I think the dominant design in Overdrive, Team Overdrive’s Bot, doesn’t apply here as much, unless you want to drag the 10 pound goals behind you…
I agree with that, it’ll be easy for teams that were around back to create ring monsters, but the other bonuses are so large, and it’ll be those bonuses that set teams apart from others.
- Sunny
Overdrive was never completely copied, but one of the better traditional designs was directly copied and used to beat that design. Knowing the team that posted their robot online, they didn’t really mind.
Overdrive copied themselves. The first time I faced them the could not score on the high post. The next time we faced the built an entire new robot based on their original design, that could now score on the high post. So they follow the directive of make your good design, great.
Dallas Morning News Sunday May2, 2010 has an article “Imitation is the sincerest form of making a buck” crediting Harvard Business Review;
I found online a similar article quoting the same professor “Oded Shenkar” at Ohio State University Fisher College of Business at this link:
For Round Up, consider imitating nesting airport luggage trailers, and imagine all 5 mobile goals trailing around after you like baby ducklings.
While that idea sounds nice in practice, 5 goals? That’s roughly 50 pounds!! I know they made the motors better this year, but how can you make that work? picking them up, and then holding them? Let alone moving around with them? I could conceivably see holding one, maybe two…But five?
I think the secret is to put two or three rings as fast as possible on as many of the poles as you can… Then have a descoring (apologies to Blake for the use of a non-word…) manipulator, so you can descore theirs, and gain control of all the poles through the game…
This is what teams who complain about being copied should do. There is never a perfect robot! Continuous improvement is the name of the game.
Moving all the mobile goals is a lot of effort and isn’t a chokehold strategy. I would recommend a very low geared drivetrain if you do it…
definately
0.5:1
using the new 2wire motors torqued up
another strategy is to get them one by one, and dump them into the center of the ladder
You did the math for that gear ratio? Glad to see that here…
As for the strategy… isn’t it faster to put 3 rings on a goal, which “locks” possession of it, actually scores you points, and doesn’t require you to make your robot very very bad?
but thats the “normal” strategy
were talking about unique team 76 strategies 
Can someone please shed light (in the form of pictures, video, or description) on 76? I was too busy being isolated in the Math Division to pay attention to teams that weren’t already notorious for being powerhouses (i.e. 254a) in the other divisions. Thanks!
they were a BIG catapult tank
that had a smaller robot that came out of it
attached by 3-5 ft of extension cables
the small bot reloaded the catapult
and they can launch 7 footballs at once
didnt work out quite as they liked it
but it was EPIC
I was going for the Future Award when they were going into the Design Award, so they explained it too me while we were waiting… The idea was totally awesome!!
With that seed planted in 393 of the other teams from around the world, I am expecting that we might see a couple other multi-bots this year… You run the danger of tangling, especially with all the stuff on the field, but I think some teams will probably still try it…
254F ran [read: attempted to run] a “multi-bot” back in October at our tournament - somehow, the idea didn’t catch on with the rest of NorCal 
. (And one part of 254F wasn’t even powered, so they didn’t need oodles of PWM cable, just a pneumatic tube joining the halves!)