What vs. Why with Past Designs

When we design our robots, it's natural to look to the past for inspiration. Robots every year show up left and right with bits and pieces of champions from years past bolted on, because these great robots clearly did something well. This learning from the past pushes the sport of competitive robotics forwards, as teams build their robots upon each other's shoulders, and quality increases each year.

But sometimes, things can go a little far. Some challenges have game tasks very similar to other years, which can tempt designers to borrow not just bits and pieces, but whole designs. It's a good way to start things out. But be careful! Successful designs are subtle things, and games have subtle differences. Before duplicating a design, you should understand exactly why the design was successful in what it did. You need to get very specific. "The NZ design was good because it was fast and simple" is not a good way to look at things. It was fast, and it was simple for Gateway, but in the face of a new challenge, you need to reconsider things. You need to be asking questions like "does the new game have a gamepiece that justifies locking myself into a fixed width, narrow intake like the side roller design?" "Do I need to score out the end I pick up?" "Do I need to have the controlled ability to score a single gamepiece at a time?" "Do the field obstacles justify a more complex lift system?" Some of the answers will lead you to remove features from the old design, others will lead you to add new ones. Developing this deeper understanding of the games, past and present, will lead you to better designs, as you can now design to precisely match the game's requirements, rather than just tweaking something that worked well in the past.

If there's interest from the VRC folks, I can write up my comprehensive list of "Why the 6 bar, side roller design was great for Gateway, but is not a universal "efficiency design"," seeing as this design has been the starting point for so many robots over the past few years.

A related issue is teams that mirror a construction technique or style, like the Cheesy Poof's West Coast Drive, without understanding it fully. "The Cheesy Poofs do it that way" isn't good design justification. In order to take advantage of a design like this, you have to understand the rationale behind it, and the physics in play. Otherwise, you run the risk of not getting the full advantage of the design, or even worse, causing a failure, because you didn't understand how it works. Again with the West Coast Drive example, one of the primary reasons to cantilever wheels is the weight savings that comes with no outer support for your wheels. And yet I can't count the number of west coast drive designs I see bulked up beyond what they need to be, which end up heavier than the kitbot!

Always understand why a design you've been inspired by was successful. Not only will it give you a better understanding of the design you are thinking about borrowing from, it will give you experience breaking down a problem, which is the core of engineering.