No. I feel like you are misunderstanding this. If teams were not breaking the rules before, they still won’t be. All teams need to do is modify designs. You almost certainly will not have an exact copy of another team if you are not trying to. As I said in the comments of a 9motorgang video,
idk how other people do this, but I design by looking at the robot that I’m taking inspiration from and then trying to design something very similar while minimally looking at the original robot. It ends up looking similar, but it is my own robot.
The only people who should be concerned are people who were already breaking the rules.
Please confirm that this applies to VIQRC in addition to V5.
Our team works so hard every year, then they arrive at an event and a third of the robots are nearly identical 180 bots (or, last year, backroller catapults). It can be discouraging AND it’s hard to get in the top 40% of the field, even if they have a 100% student built design that performs decently well, and excellent notebook documenting their challenges, and innovative design seen nowhere else (because they built the bot themselves!)
Please, PLEASE enforce this. And let me know if VIQRC is included in the G4 Update.
I actually agree with many of the points raised by @Foster .
But just to tackle this one first.
Think I have mentioned this before (old age = faulty memory) - there are certain mechanisms that have only that few limited ways of doing it.
The most recent example will be last season goal clamp - there were only that few ways of doing it.
And even if we look at 6-bar or DR4B, if the robot needs to raise its lift to certain heights, then there are really that few measurements that the team can used.
And I really wonder how many variation can one comes out with in doing a 6-bar.
And 6-bar was used to nickname as NZ lift, so I guess only NZ teams can used it now?
Coz the engineer in me just couldn’t figure out a different design (in terms of connecting the c-channels) for 6-bar.
Since we are going down this rabbit hole, then maybe I should take this opportunity to remind everyone (that bother to read my post) that my long time ago alumni was the first mover (in vex) for single flywheel, 4-ball catapult, 2-ball catapult, DR4B and ITZ internal stacker, locked omnis, etc…..
(Even though I know they did had their inspirations from some old and obscure FRC videos, etc. lol…).
@Foster - hopefully now my teams won’t need to crack their brains on trying to figure out different ways in constructing a DR4B
Oh wait… I have 8 teams, so they need to figure out 8 different variations
But enough of my idiocy rumblings.
I don’t agree to blatant cloning. Coz this is not what I signed my teams up for.
But I am looking from the practical aspects of things.
Coz this will means EPs and robot inspectors will need to be so well exposed to the in and out of the different designs that are happening around the world, and as what Foster says - how much difference is enough?
I really don’t think we are making things easy for the robot inspectors and the EPs.
And like I mentioned in the earlier post, I really don’t wish to see the VEX culture devolving into a toxic and fearful environment.
The rules that were in place before were less stringent, these are. How much different is different. Remember, you may have a person that has NEVER been to a RECF event make this decision.
Everybody should be watching this very closely. “If you are not doing anything bad, you have nothing to fear” has been a failure statement across society for years.
At the end of the day isn’t it the EP and RECF who makes the final call? I guess only RECF directly can give input at sigs, but the RSM is always a call away, no? I agree with the fact that the new rules make cause some subjectivity, but if anything I feel like the new G4 has clarified a little more about what is allowed and what isn’t to keep the competition fair. Again, of course clarification would be good, but I think there is a pretty clear difference between two different bar lifts, even if say one is braced in a different way. That obviously wasn’t copied, it was modified to fit the purpose the team wanted it to. I think VEX/RECF knows exactly what they are doing, but I guess only time will tell how this plays out.
To a certain degree that is true - at event remember it is not just the EP who makes decisions, some are made independently by the Head Referee for matches if they decide that the robot does not represent skill level of team <R2> and can be cause to rule that robot has not passed inspection and can participate in matches – under <T1> such rulings by Head Referee are final. Also, EP, Judge Advisor, and Head Referee work together in G1, G2, and G4 (and I expect G5) discussions and always confer with RECF RSM during the day before actions are taken. Follow up for G1,G2,G4 is done by CoC using process that is well defined in Code of Conduct and Student-Centered policies.
I will say these processes may seem cumbersome, but they are measured as to prevent knee-jerk reactions and subjectivity.
Also remember, RECF has put out excellent training and certification courses for key volunteers which has a huge impact on consistency.
Yea I talked to the refs at Great Planes and I feel so bad for them it’s so hard to make calls when you can barely see what’s happening and 1 second makes all the difference.
totally agree, Like do we have to find a new way of screwing in screws or smth? For innovation to take place, do we have to disregard every other mechanism? I do think it is important to be unique but at a certain point, there are only so many ways of using a shaft collar.
Out of curiosity, how does this apply to programming? Like, what if a team decided to use another team’s programming template? Or what if they used AI to write their code? There’s seems to be gray area, so I’m curious where the line should/will be drawn.
Now perhaps I misunderstand, but I don’t see any situation in which purely AI generated code would be legal. You did not write that yourself, and (in some cases) the user doesn’t understand the code. Now I’m sure using AI to debug, and you understanding why the suggestions work better, would be ethical. Remember, you and your team are competing in robotics, not ChatGPT. Programming templates as of now have not been explicitly legal, but you should be able to explain the algorithms. If you can’t, it is likely that the code was too advanced to you and you have some great stuff to learn. Not that I want to go down that rabbit hole, but it wouldn’t be the worse thing if templates were required to have white papers so that users can learn about them.
However, rereading the new G4 (per Q&A), I did notice it focused heavily on robot design (it clearly said what was or wasn’t legal), and not so much on code. Perhaps it is one thing at a time. So just as the new G4 has some more specific stuff regarding build, perhaps it would be helpful to do the same for programming.
On the side, reading the new G4 about how robots in the same organization should differ in someway, I think this is good, because I mean collaboration will happen, but if the robots end up being the exact same, then perhaps it was best for those teams to all be one team.
One more thought, I think there is a lot of concern about how events will enforce this, and I hope at least for next season more specific guidance gets built into the yearly trainings. Or maybe stuff can be clarified at the town hall.
Overall, personally I think this changes are great, but I won’t pretend there might not be controversy, whether or not I fail to see it sometimes.
The new G4 points to the Student Centered Policy for guidance on what is allowed for programming.
In the SCP there are two non-student-centered examples that cover your question:
Students cannot demonstrate application of programming concepts contained within their code.
Students use a custom library developed by another team, but cannot create their own custom libraries.
Fairly bright line drawn, that, if we are honest, many teams are crossing.
I do wonder if shared libraries that the students found online are considered as custom libraries by another teams.
And personally I do wonder are we asking or expecting too much from the students?
Or the students just need to demonstrate that they know how to create a custom library? Because I think most teams will be in trouble if the expectation is that they must demonstrate understanding about the codes inside the custom libraries.
I think the simple plain language is that these libraries for competition are not from the team and not VEX library, and you work from there. This leads to conclusion outside solution for team that they could not produce on their own.
No, it is not too much to expect a team to be able to code their own robots, libraries or not.
and they should be worried if they are appropriating technologies they are not capable of producing themselves for solely competitive advantage.
I believe the G4 clarification is spot on to promote teams to develop core skills. Outsourcing solutions (for pay or not) is depriving teams to learn these fundamental skills just in order to win more awards or advance to Championship events as their sole success metric.
I favor the let the teams learn the core skills side of the scale.
