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Dean Kamen Awarded Patent For Robot Competition Rules
An anonymous reader writes "Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway and the founder of the FIRST Robotics Competition has been granted Patent 7,507,169, that describes one of the previous competitions. The main invention is a ranking system that ranks teams not only on their score, but their opponents' score, so teams are rewarded for helping their opponents score more. It is claimed that this ranking system promotes the made up phrases 'coopertition' and 'gracious professionalism.' It had three rejections, and even more appeals, before finally being accepted six years after the first application. While a majority of his 130 patents are for things related to his inventions, which are as diverse as medical equipment, unique uses for Stirling engines, and transportation, this one seems a little dubious. Dean opposes the Patent Reform Act of 2009, which would make it easier to overturn patents after they are granted."
What's the matter... he's afraid that after patenting too much obvious and frivolous stuff like robot competition rules, they'll start telling him... duhhhh, this is too obvious dude :) ?
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
"Dean opposes the Patent Reform Act of 2009, which would make it easier to overturn patents after they are granted" ... Just like the guy (Victor Hugo?) who brought to life copyright and its terms of death+ years, he was old and had a lot of writings and had 4 children ... lots to gain from copyright.
He'd be all set.
Sadly, neither irony nor sarcasm were used in the making of this post.
You cannot copyright a game, but you are allowed to patent the rules? For shame!
Ideas should be free. The idea that one can own an idea is, I believe, an ill conceived principal.
Perhaps I should patent "patents".
Alliances?
(I wish he'd licensed this to Dancing With The Stars!)
OK a new size TV
Ah, a patent that no one on Slashdot would ever be sued for violating.
As a former FIRST competitor, I can say that the consensus of 99% of the students HATED the retarded attempts at enforcing sportsmanship by silly tricks like the winner gets the losers score x3 in qualifying points. Combined with a completely broken randomization system (they tried to maximize the time teams had to recuperate between rounds, but the result was same handful of teams were in the random "pool" to pull from every round.) ensured the top seeded teams for the playoffs was practically random. It also made for what in my opinion was the most humiliating thing, where the winning team would have their opponent soundly beat, and would stop scoring for themselves and start scoring for their opponents. Any scoring and ranking system that makes College Football look fair and accurate is so flawed it should probably be patented and buried deep just so no one else can copy it.
In rankings for chess (used elsewhere too), resistance points are used to break deadlocks when people have scored the same. This is mostly of use in incomplete competitions as when everyone plays everyone, the results of this are far less important because true playing strength will eventually come out.
:)
When I was programming reversi/othello programs ca. 1985-1989 I saw a phenomenon where in e.g. a field of 12 programs, and 6 games each program played, ranking by points was sometimes grossly unjust, so I decided to experiment with a matrix multiplication method where a matrix of results * vector of players strengths should give the player 's strength again and one could (hopefully) iteratively obtain the right values. This had the problem of some values converging to zero, but the idea was ok (strength from a certain iteration on gave the right intuitive results where players with higher scores could still be ranked lower because they mainly played lesser opponents. I never worked it out such that it always worked. The idea seemed (and still seems) right though.
Anyway, this sort of idea seems the same as Kamen's, namely that ones score gets higher the higher the opponents score. This is again obvious from thinking about a limited number of rounds, and thinking of resistance points, so I cannot understand why anyone should be able to patent this. It may not be obvious to a layman, but if you dive into ranking stuff, this idea is not an invention.
Then again, perhaps my idea in the 1980s was invention worthy
Dear sir,
I am writing to you regarding a new matter that has been brought to my attention by my clients. In this particular matter our office represents Dean Kamen.
The use of the cliche "If all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail" in an electronic forum has been patented by our client in patent #8,219,493: "Use Of Hammer-Based Metaphors in Electronic Discussion". Your use of this phrase is in violation of United States patent law, and I request that you remove this content immediately.
I have a good faith belief, and in fact know for certain, that the posting of these works was not authorized by my clients, any agent of my clients, or the law.
Sincerely,
Herman J. Bloodsucker, Esq.
"It is claimed that this ranking system promotes the made up phrases 'coopertition' and 'gracious professionalism.'"
The ranking system is an excellent piece of game theory. In fact it's worth a Nobel prize. Specifically John Nash's. The system is based on the subset of the Nash Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium in which the players cooperate to maximize overall success. It was characterized in the 'nobody go for the blond' scene in "A Beautiful Mind". Despite suffering from schizophrenia, Nash managed to get across a novel concept that contradicted the basic tenets of economics without making up goofy names.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
As a student competitor in FIRST Robotics competition for the past three years, I have some experience with FIRST and its rules. What happened this year has made many question whether FIRST rewards winning or if it is just trying to design games where nobody's feelings get hurt.
This year's FRC game was called Lunacy. Two teams of three robots tried to score special balls in trailers pulled by opposing robots. Overall the game was well received in the FIRST community except for a certain rule. The rule in question stated that if one alliance doubled or tripled the opposing alliances score, they would lose a certain game piece (and therefore some ability to score) in their next match.
Some like that rule saying that it added strategy because blowing out the opponents would be counted productive. Also, those people said that the rule helped emphasize that running up the score is not in line with "Gracious Professionalism."
Most people, however, found "G22" to be quite stupid. The lack of reliable real-time scoring meant that the drivers and coaches would often not know what the score was, defeating any strategic depth it may have added. Furthermore, the concept that you can be punished for doing too well in competition was something many found ridiculous.
This whole incident has made me question whether FIRST Robotics can be considered a serious competitive game. Dean Kamen himself has urged competitors in FIRST to garner more media coverage for the competition. Until teams are no longer punished for doing too well, I don't think most media outlets or anyone else can take the competition too seriously.