We all take ideas from others. All VEX robots flow from the square bot or protobot. 2/4 drive omni, kiwi, 6 wheel, 8 week, etc been there swiped that.
I propose the re-innovate award to reward person / team one that came up with an idea. Teams would say where they got some of their ideas.Team 1640 “Standard 4 wheel omni, but the turntable is from Team 80.” Check with Team 80 and they go "Oh yea, turntable is from team 677. Team 677 says, yes we modified it from an idea from team 98.
Scoring 98- → 677 → 80 → 1640 - 4 points * 5 since it about 1/2 the design 20 points
Interesting concept, but I find some issues with that.
Let’s take 254a’s design this year.
Aside from the teams I know, I’ll be some using some generic numbers.
Team 254a is the “original”
Team 1899 credits 10Q, which credits 575, which credits 721.
What if 721 was not at the tournament, but if they were they would’ve credited 254a? What if your robot drew inspiration from multiple robots for different mechanisms? What if a single mechanism was inspired by multiple robots with similar concepts?
I’m in support of anything that encourages and rewards public sharing of prototypes and designs. This is a particularly novel solution, but with the main problem that the “best teams” already qualify for Worlds easily, so they have no incentive to post design ideas. How many times did 254A qualify last year? How many copies of 254A did you see?
I would much rather have the judging process ensure that teams that built bolt for bolt clones don’t get technical awards. Teams that were inspired by someone else of course are still eligible, with credit given to the inspiree somehow.
From the list I made that had all the info I could find on teams last year, I had that 254A won over 20 spots for the world championships. But I may have missed a few tournaments, although I spoke with John Miller (Captain of team 254A) and he gave me information about two tournaments they went to that I did not have the info for.
I was thinking of putting up a post about all the crap i have had to think about after uploading pictures of my design on vex forum -_- but that wouldn’t exactly be appropriate for this thread. Also even if this award is eventually around i don’t think i would try and get it anyway 254A would just win and my design would be around for the taking of anyone who dose not just want to be a poof copy then they can go win worlds just like my new zeland copy’s from last year. BECAUSE I ALWAYS WIN on the inside…
I know that you aren’t ranting about how people stole your robot design, but lets take a look at some facts, you posted your first picture of your robot ( https://vexforum.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4384&c=searchresults&searchid=483748 ) on 01-11-2010 11:21 PM. Now, take a look at this video, it shows 2921C’s robot which is pretty similar to yours and their final design at the world championship: [- YouTube . Okay, so this video in the description says that it was a tournament hosted on 01-13-2010, and I’m going to assume that this tournament started at 9:00 AM, I don’t think most tournaments start much later than that. Now, from my search, I found that New Zealand has a +16 hour time zone difference to Eastern Central Time (What I am using to get your picture post’s date and time from), so therefor the tournament actually started 01-12-2010 at ~5:00 PM for me, so the team had around 17.5 hours to build their robot, and that’s if they saw your picture almost immediately after you posted it, and started building then, and got absolutely no sleep before their tournament.
-Jordan](- YouTube . Okay, so this video in the description says that it was a tournament hosted on 01-13-2010, and I’m going to assume that this tournament started at 9:00 AM, I don’t think most tournaments start much later than that. Now, from my search, I found that New Zealand has a +16 hour time zone difference to Eastern Central Time (What I am using to get your picture post’s date and time from), so therefor the tournament actually started 01-12-2010 at ~5:00 PM for me, so the team had around 17.5 hours to build their robot, and that’s if they saw your picture almost immediately after you posted it, and started building then, and got absolutely no sleep before their tournament.)
Sometimes more than one group of people come up with a decent idea and then many of those groups build it similarly using similar parts. It happens often in FIRST’s FRC competitions. It will inevitably happen even more often in VRC.
Many of my great ideas somehow get magically copied, even though I never build an implementation of them - I am surprised at how many North American Vex teams must have access to the NSA’s telepathy machine. I might have to start wearing my tin foil hat again.
Foster’s suggestion involves being gracious enough to want to give credit to a source of inspiration, and being more excited about becoming a source of inspiration than of taking home a hunk of metal.
) on 01-11-2010 11:21 PM. Now, take a look at this video, it shows 2921C’s robot which is pretty similar to yours and their final design at the world championship: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frv8U5FdCOQ . Okay, so this video in the description says that it was a tournament hosted on 01-13-2010, and I’m going to assume that this tournament started at 9:00 AM, I don’t think most tournaments start much later than that. Now, from my search, I found that New Zealand has a +16 hour time zone difference to Eastern Central Time (What I am using to get your picture post’s date and time from), so therefor the tournament actually started 01-12-2010 at ~5:00 PM for me, so the team had around 17.5 hours to build their robot, and that’s if they saw your picture almost immediately after you posted it, and started building then, and got absolutely no sleep before their tournament.
-Jordan
First thing i have to say is GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT. THAT WAS NOT MY FIRST PICTURE THIS IS 1 OF THEM . Really don’t even try to say the New Zealand team wasn’t a copy. I’m also guessing your next excuse to say is that the bottom conveyor belt wasn’t in the original pictures but in the picture that was up for about 17.5 hours. thank you for telling me it was definitely around long enough for a home school team to build.
. Really don’t even try to say the New Zealand team wasn’t a copy. I’m also guessing your next excuse to say is that the bottom conveyor belt wasn’t in the original pictures but in the picture that was up for about 17.5 hours. thank you for telling me it was definitely around long enough for a home school team to build.
Very sorry Liam, I was in a hurry and when doing a quick search of 677 in the gallery that picture did not come up.
So, it looks as if they could have built it in time, but as many have said about the 254A robot, if you post pictures, or go to tournaments and other people post pictures, you may get exact copies/main design ideas stolen. For you, I wouldn’t say that Free Range made an exact copy at all, so there isn’t really anything you should be mad about, if you post pictures, people like the main design, and they make their own, that’s just how it works, same as going to a tournament and seeing a robot you think has a great design. But still you have no way to prove that they stole your idea using your picture, remember elevation, everyone ended up having a double conveyor, I’m sure not everyone posted/looked at pictures on the Vex forum.
Now, I don’t exactly know what you mean by: “One last thing to destroy any comeback you could think of. [http://www.robotics.org.nz/index.php/photo-gallery/category/17-development-photos.html This is the free range website with their development photos.”
In fact I was almost about to use that in my first post, but unfortunately the dates the pictures were posted on are not listed anywhere.
You don’t need to attack anyone. We’re talking about high school robotics, this is far from anything serious.
I looked at the pictures and it made it look like they were trying different variants of the “floating roller plus four bar linkage” design for awhile, and happened to settle on a design that looks similar to yours. I don’t see how that’s supposed to demonstrate how that team thought the best way to compete would be to cut and paste something bolt for bolt.
Even if they did: Your kindness and willingness to share made a team of robotics kids get hardware, share happy memories with each other, and ultimately become more inspired to pursue engineering as a field of study. If you’re still upset about losing a competitive advantage, months later, maybe you’re losing focus on what VRC can really do for a high schooler and why the program exists.
Can we all perhaps learn a lesson from this quote:
[INDENT] “I met a man with a dollar and we exchanged dollars. We each left with a dollar.
I met a man with an idea, we exchanged ideas. We each left with two ideas.” [/INDENT]
About putting a bed of treads into a Vex bot - I built one emphasizing that mechanism back during the QQ season, long before any Clean Sweep bots existed. A visiting NZ teacher and I had a long discussion about it while we were at the FIRST World Championships. That could easily have planted the seed for the treads that appeared in the NZ bot this season - or not. No one has a patent on that idea.
Here in the states, anyone who walked through the FVC pits that season or who saw me carrying the bot around in the Georgia Dome (or who saw it in an FVC demo at the VA FRC Regional) could easily have been influenced by it, and that influence could have spread pretty far by now.
And regardless of the paragraphs above, the design space VRC operates in is large; but not so large that we shouldn’t expect to frequently see similar implementations of very similar ideas. Because of that fact the speculation in this thread is nearly moot. It is not useful, and it certainly doesn’t strike me as inspiring.
Let’s have a conversation we can be proud of, and that would make either our grandmothers, or a prospective ally, college, or employer, eager to have us on their team.
Well the first thing i must say is Quote Chris ham “You don’t need to attack anyone. We’re talking about high school robotics, this is far from anything serious.” lol xD But not the same case if your the 15 year old on the 2 man team who spent forever working on that robot to have it fail at the world championship because of vex making motors that break so easily -_-… then see 2 robots that look so much like mine go and win the whole thing when I know they couldn’t have ever been there if I didn’t uploaded those pictures which ended up actually making me feel all fuzzy inside and angry but anyway i enjoy watching the other people have panic attacks instead of me.
Jordan about the last comment… that was not meant to attack you at all i was just trying to show similarities between how the design’s looking similar over there building process. Also it was just me being extremely competitive to win a mini battle of facts about the robot i built and love dearly if you understand what i mean.
ALSO an important thing to say is when i said they copied my design I’m not saying it is a screw for screw copy i really mean they copied the same concepts that made my design successful throughout the season like what it could do that the other designs couldn’t you guys can imagine what I’m talking about and since i don’t want to get even more off topic so now it would be nice to just ignore my previous comments and get back on to the topic and i have probably annoyed foster enough BUT JORDAN STARTED IT. JUST KIDDING XD
Liam
PS.Try to ignore spelling errors and my none usage of the Quote function.
There is no proof they copied you. I believe that Freerange won the first NZ scrimmage with that design. There were alot of robots with that concept, you were probably bot the only one who can think.
I understand, I would be very upset too if my robot malfunctioned or broke down at the world championship and another robot (In your case two) that had a design like mine ended up winning the whole thing.
Okay, yes the main design does look similar, and is. Although they made many changes, yes, the main design of the robot is the same concept; floating rollers of some sort on an angled plate with a 4-bar to lift it. You could say as well: on the plate some sort of conveyor system that helps the balls be collected and dispensed easier.
Yes I pretty much did start it, haha. Sorry again about false facts, and I understand how you could be upset, and I know I would be, just want to say good luck in Round Up! (You guys are already qualified if I remember correctly, so keep on designing and building!)
It’s likely that I’ll see both of you during the upcoming season - When/if we do cross paths, I hope you will take me aside for a moment to discuss what you have written in this thread. In my personal opinion you have both written or “enabled” more mistakes than I can “shake a stick at”.
i’m going to leave liam out of this and just use the kiwi perspective here:
freerange had that design for a rather long time, and of course i cant say for certain if they got the inspiration somewhere else, but i’m pretty sure they had it near the beginning of the season - they alligned and won many competitions with onehunga/symbiohsis - and they DEFINITELY had it before our january competition.
Also, one boy from my team took inspiration from their design and for a competition in mid-march(?) he put the conveyor on the bottom and used a similar design, which he then altered again (changed the wheel legs to tank treads and paddles) for the next competition. predictably freerange had the bottom conveyor soon after. He kept his design very similar for World Champs.
between our Nationals and Worlds, a boy from Kristin/K-Force mimicked our team’s robot (with help, in fact, from our team :p) and was an eventual part of the winning alliance in Dallas.
Given the fact that we’re all just proud of him for winning, why is there so much arguement over ‘stealing designs’? - BE LIKE THE KIWIS, FELLAS XD
Photographs are taken of every Kiwi Game (when the camera works) and the Clean sweep season was well photographed. In the very first game played in the world (yes the world) on the 30th July 2009 Symbiohsis (Onehunga High School) had a robot with parrallel arms to lift their ‘ball hopper’ with a sweeper. In the same game the Home school has a robot with a sweep mechanism that swept balls onto a tray. http://www.youtube.com/user/RoboticsAtRangitoto#p/u/25/6H_hrSBSqMs as the season progressed and the two teams started working together we saw their final design develop and mature into what finally won. I believe that their design was the genuine result of cooperation between the teams.
Also note in the video you can see the Rangitoto robot 2901, a descendant of which was in the winning alliance. RAR are happy that someone used their design and improved on it by making it lighter and faster.
Who knows but all the designs could have come from previous competition designs but that is why we now have the iPhone 4.
I like to thank Blake, Chris and Chris for their calm posts trying to bring thread back on track.
The VEX forum was designed as a place for people all over the world to share their passion and enthusiasm for VEX Robotics. It was not intended as place for baseless accusations. Let’s try and leave those accusations and the attitudes that come with them at the door from now. I’d like to end all the discussion of “so and so copied my amazing robot” and redirect this thread to Foster’s initial idea. In the long run giving credit and earning credit will always be more rewarding than whining for credit.
so now it would be nice to just ignore my previous comments and get back on to the topic and i have probably annoyed foster enough BUT JORDAN STARTED IT. JUST KIDDING XD