Over the last couple of years, robots have looked more and more alike with many people complaining about “cookie cutter” designs. Almost all of the robots that are at worlds turn out to be the same, with some even attempting to be screw by screw copies of another teams robot. In my opinion I attribute a lot of these same designs to early season robot reveals. While forum discussions on intakes, and lifts, and drives are constructive and good, these should stay as discussions, with people needing to take their own ideas to make a physical product, instead of being able to see a physical product they can copy. The one design that comes specifically to mind is Stanley Shi’s catapult, which was shown in a youtube video last year for Toss Up. It was a very good catapult, and because of this many teams that made it to worlds had VERY similar designs, and some were even exactly the same.If we really want new innovation and design, in my opinion robots should not be fully, or partially, revealed until about a week before worlds. This would still let teams show off their robots, but wouldn’t allow for teams to copy their designs and use them as theirs. I would love to hear others opinions on the matter, so feel free to comment below your own ideas on “cookie cutter” robots, robot reveals, or any topic you want to talk about that is related.
I fully agree with your point. It’s cool to see others robots compete in matches on YouTube, but at worlds it seemed as is every robot looked the same. The robot reveals are great, but they take away the innovation part of VEX. I don’t mind people posting their matches online, but when it’s a bunch of close ups, people start to copy it screw for screw without knowing how it works.
I agree with your opinion completely
I disagree.
Yes Worlds had many of the same robots (side rollers, top rollers, 6-bar, 4 wheel drive etc), but what truly separated the “good” robots from the “bad” robots were the things like: Driving, unique features, and autonomous. Those were the biggest factors at Worlds since the robots were “basically” the same.
I love robot reveals as it inspires new and fresh ideas. They can make you think more on your design and how to improve it. If a team really wants to screw-for-screw copy, go ahead. By the time they are finished, the robot they copied “should” have improved and would be able to beat their copy.
I think it’s fine, and I don’t think we can do anything about it. If you don’t keep improving your robot, you will not succeed, and, seeing other peoples robots can help you get better.
I could be wrong since ive yet to go to worlds but, it seems as the teams that are part of a high school with a mass amounts of students and money and like 10 of the same team all have about the same robot. Those teams seem like the kind that take a reveal video and build off of it. It would be nice if those teams made original ideas of their own and posted videos about them
I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter when designs are revealed. My “mid season” reveal was actually a robot made in August. We didn’t reveal anything early in the season because we knew that when catapults were revealed they would become the standard. We were a few months ahead of the curve but teams closed the gap extremely fast.
Its kind of saddening to get to worlds and see that some teams have the exact same designs of a “revealed robot”. Wheres the fun in that?
I believe that robot reveals are good to a certain extent. They might demonstrate ideas that could make your robot better where its weak, and even better yet, it could inspire you to create a new robot capable of completing the task with a higher efficiency than your previous robot. On the other hand, robot reveals lead to copying, which takes the innovation and originality out of the competition. Plus, most of the time students aren’t even learning in the process, which takes away the purpose of the competition.
I completely agree with Odyssey. The last time I competed in the Worlds Championship was Sack Attack and the number of almost identical robots was mind-boggling. I could walk up and down the pits, and see robots that looked almost completely the same in all areas. As a scout, this is highly frustrating when trying to find a good partner, because of how similar they all are. When teams posts their reveal early in the season, it is exciting to see how other people have dealt with the challenge, but then at Worlds, 8 out of 10 robots are almost identical to one of the revealed robots. This is supposed to be a robotics program to encourage creativity and problem solving, not one where to find a strong design, you can just look on the forums. I believe the forums are for brainstorming ideas and helping others. Robot reveals early in the season encourage laziness and lack of effort.
As much as I hate seeing “cookie cutter” robots, I still believe that all ideas branch off of other ideas. I would hope that people aren’t (although this does unfortunately happen) copy an entire robot. You should be able to see some examples and think of how to make it your own, or make it way better!
As people have stated, innovation and ideas do come from robot reveals and I have to agree. Sometimes a reveal will get you to think differently and help you do better. The teams that do this aren’t the ones I am talking about in this post though. I am targeting the teams that copy, more than they try to learn. At the end of the day, Vex is really about the learning, and if a team just copies they don’t learn a thing. The robot reveals allow teams to simply take their metal and build someone else robot. This is neither constructive, nor helpful. I fully support talking robots, ideas, and the sort but I mainly don’t like the videos that give detailed images of robots for people to use. Give people the ideas through a thread post, but don’t give them the robot.
It was very interesting to walk through the VRC pits, followed by a walk through the VEX IQ Challenge pits. Going through the VRC pits, it was robot after robot with the exact same basic structure and functionality. (I like to call this a result of “design convergence”.) Sure many teams had their own unique details that separated them from the pack, but for the most part these details were both minor and discreet. Now on the VEX IQ side, it was drastically different. The variety of robots and strategy was incredible; the robots were diverse and memorable. It made for a much more exciting competition in the eyes of a spectator like myself.
What allowed for the diversity of design in the VIQC, but hindered it in VRC? There are lots of factors in play, and with only one full season of evidence on the VIQC side, it really is hard to make any sort of definitive analysis. It has been postulated by more than a few people that the reason the VIQC had such great variance in robot styles was because of the lack pictures and videos found online of their robots. The VIQC is still a new program with fewer events and teams, and a less networked community. Perhaps the more isolated nature of their events and teams is why teams ended up being more creative; with a lack of access to examples of other robots, teams were left to their own devices, thus they worked on their own to come up with unique designs. It’s definitely an interesting theory.
Now let me say this. I’m absolutely not against the sharing of designs. Teams should operate in whichever manner they see fit. I’m a part of a robotics team in another program which has won numerous awards for our sharing of information. I’m also very bored of cookie cutter robots that all look the same as a result of design convergence. I want to attend VRC events and be wowed by the creativity AND effectiveness of the robots. (I’m not interested in seeing creative, yet terrible robots…) Now, it’s not the responsibility of any team to try and be different for the sake of being different. Every team has their own goals, and for most of you it’s to win the competition (as it should be). If you think copying and slightly changing a proven design is your best shot at winning, then by all means go ahead down that path. But, I also assert that teams didn’t come close to the optimal designs for Toss Up, because so many of the brightest minds in the community passed up on potentially risky and creative designs, because they were afraid of being left behind by the established designs. As such avenues that could have presented dominant robots went unexplored. I just wanted to make this post to get people thinking about the various causes and barriers to design convergence, and the impacts it has on their teams.
I don’t support or oppose, but the teams who copy aren’t usually the winners. Look at 21. they invented the magic intake and who came out on top of all the other robots with the same intake.
I do think that if a team is going to copy an idea they should credit the team
That is a decision for all teams to make. And how teams make the decision depends on their goal.
Like Karthik said, the goal of the competition should be winning the champion and awards. But how a team decides to achieve that will directly influence how much they will learn and benefit from it.
I only had one year of VEX experience. Technically, less than one year. But insisting my own idea was something that made me learn a lot. My first design for toss up was a two motor drive, one motor rotation arm and one motor top tread intake, two motor scissor lift built above it and then motor fork large ball intake. Of course it was ridiculous because I had zero experience. But I did learn so much from this failure, which forced me to re-calculate the most efficient motor allocation. I wouldn’t have learned so much if I just simply copied a whole popular robot. We did not even strive into world championship, but we did learn and benefit from the program.
Therefore, it is up to the teams to decide whether or not to reveal or copy. But the decision they make will decide how much they benefit. Merely building a robot according to a blueprint or another one is the slowest way to learn in VEX, in my opinion.
I agree.
One of the reasons I believe there is more diversity in iq bot designs is the lack of experience. Much like my first year of vrc, it is a whole new process so they need to try out many different designs to find out what works to them. It does make the competition very fun to watch though 
I feel that in vrc the reason some of the bots are so “cookie cutter” is that some of us have had experience with many designs, and know what designs (seem to) work the best. This was my second year in vex, and my robot for toss up much resemble my sack attack robot. This had nothing to do with copying from anyone (beside myself). I stuck to direct drive on the base BECAUSE IT WORKS. I stuck to a six bar arm BECAUSE IT WORKS. For me it has been learning what works best in my personal application.
On a side not I’m very glad to see that the new game Skyrise will be challenging us to think of new lifts and intakes. Looking forward to thinking of new designs (most likely won’t even closely resemble past designs)
Now a good example of a team that makes it far with their own design would be green egg and in sack attack 323z they both had creative, effective, and overall amazing designs. Specially green egg. They are the team to take risks and think outside the box. I envy them and try to do the same. I do my best to think of something other then a 6bar or anything of the sort. I like the challenge, the failures, and the successes. Sure I can take the easy route but I’m trying to improve my talent and take it to the next level every year. I built the simplest robot for toss up which was a single pivot conveyor intake. It won two events and made it all the way to Simi finals at states. The winning teams from states were practically the same robot from the same team. I was proud to of made it far with an original and that’s a feeling every team should experience.
This is perfectly true in every way. Granted, my team has a history of approaching radical solutions to “solve” the game so to speak. We have experience varied success. But, lately, we also find ourselves having to look at others for ideas, finding that the common designs that are being used are the ones that we see fit. Now, all this said, and with my fourth and final year of VEX approaching, I’ve found the habit of “cookie cutting” is the reason the games are getting much more difficult - everyone is exactly the same, and only set apart by driver skill. Just a thought.
After seeing numerous threads about this same topic, I’d like to address how we all view the word “copy”. To me, seeing the idea of a six-bar and side roller robot and building one is not copying. Copying is when you see the six-bar and side roller, build what you saw, and stop working. I believe that the mark of a true engineer is a perpetual need to improve, no matter how perfect the project may already seem.
One of the best examples of not being satisfied with success was the skills showdown put on by 2915A and 2941A throughout the entire sack attack season. Initially, a 270 seemed like the upper limit to what a robot could do, didn’t it? Boy were we wrong. Without straying from a bar lift, roller/flap intake, and speedy drive, both 2915A and 2941A were able to nearly double their skills scores: constant review and improvement served them well.
Wise words from a wise guy. Keep innovating Jesse, it was great to see you again at the US Open.
As somebody who builds D bots, please continue to all build the exact same robot. It makes it much easier to design a robot to shut down your opponent when you know exactly what your opponent does without ever having to scout 
Honestly, design convergence is real life. Look at the evolution of the game controller. You start out with these ugly rectangular prism things that kind of fit the hand and work your way towards today where Sony and Microsoft have things perfectly suited for the human hand (and Nintendo is off being weird, but we’re just going to ignore them). Where is the innovation in design, you ask, why can’t they just make something original? But the thing is, in VEX as in life, there is a design people will converge on. And there’s a reason for that, it’s not because people are too lazy or unoriginal to come up with their own design, but because that design is the one that works.
TL;DR - Keep making identical robots so I can wall you in a corner as you very efficiently score just little enough you can’t win. Still, you’ll do great in skills if you build the best design the best.
At the start of the season…early-on tournaments, you will see a lot more unique robot designs…a lot more teams will experiment and field different designed bots. But as the season progresses, these very same teams will go through internal debate as they see a general robot design that they believe works better for the set of challenges in the game.
Those that believe in their design will stick to it and figure ways to improve it…those that want to win and win immediately, will generally abandon their current design and build a new robot patterned after what they see “works” not only online, but also in various local tournaments. Unfortunately, there will be more teams that will abandon their initial design and go with one that they perceive is better than their original one.
Yeah competing this year in FRC seemed like every bot was a copy or close to copy of Simbotics 2008 bot. Then coming to the vex side I also saw every robot was the same or close to it. I still want there to be a Vex Game that has a choke hold strategy so I can intouch with that inner 71.
I feel like most of my opinions on this matter have already been said on this thread, but anyway…
Robot reveals early in the season and in depth pictures of robots do contribute to the “design convergence” that was seen in both Gateway and Toss up. Design convergence for these seasons are probably a direct result of the 2011 Robot World Cup, Which a large portion of the high ranking teams used the so called “NZ design” (which I dislike as it implied All New Zealand robots were the same, which was wrong). Since these robots were good they were copied which lead onto a “standard” design globally for the rest of the season via the internet. The Internet makes a multitude of information that is applicable to VRC from outside and inside the community very easy to access. So then making a robot that you did not design is very easy. I personally see do not very much gain from this at all. However if winning is your goal, then this may be the way to go: to build a good copy of a good robot and improve from there.
However if your goal is to have a good and enriching learning experience from VRC then this is most definitely NOT the way to go,it is one of the worst possible thing you could do. You have only followed instructions and not carved your own path (metaphorically).
So the Problem: the problem is peoples’ goal for their Robotics program. Which Results in how they use: reveals, matches and other material which people will inevitable put online all throughout the season.
Note: I do not disagree with posting matches online early to midway though the season, Like with the Robot World Cup.
I do however disagree with phrases such as the “Standard” design, (not sure if it has been used on this thread 
, yet). As some teams do work hard to make these designs( that to the casual observer will look the same) very good, and a notch above and beyond the copycats or “standard” robots.