Hackaday prize 2016, a ripoff of a 12 year old project?

[FrankBuss]

The Hackaday prize 2016 is a bit simple, but looks neat. It is a modular robot system and I'm sure it is useful to test robot movements, construction etc.:

http://hackaday.com/2016/11/05/dtto-explorer-modular-robot-wins-2016-hackaday-prize/

This is the project page:

https://hackaday.io/project/9976-dtto-explorer-modular-robot

It says "This robot is Inspired by the MTRAN III". This is the page of the 12 year old project from which it was "inspired":

https://unit.aist.go.jp/is/frrg/dsysd/mtran3/index.htm

Looks like a 100% copy to me, and you can get $150,000 for such an entry? I don't know. Compare this to the effort that went into the 2015 prize and how much more useful it is:

http://hackaday.com/2015/11/14/eyedriveomatic-wins-the-2015-hackaday-prize/

But maybe I'm wrong and it was a complete new development, which just happens to look and move exactly the same, and I'm just jealous that I didn't do it. I can't find any source code or CAD files for the M-TRAN, just some publications like this one where you can compare the architecture with the Hackaday project.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Yes I'm with you, seems a long way off something useful, and what they have got is a direct copy.

So what should have won 2016? That seems the better question.
My 20 cents.
After a quick look, I would choose the Ferro Fluid sensor. (I might be biased though, i love that stuff).
Then maybe the Reflectance imaging dome. I don't really get the optics bench but it might be good.

The mechaduino WTF? so what?

 

[EEVblog]

Having been a judge on the Hack-A-Day prize, you can't just "pick a winner". There is a complex aggregated voting system based on fixed criteria.

[EEVblog]

As for it being a copy, that's allowed, but if the judges were paying attention then it should have scored 1 out of 10 or very low on the "innovative" metric.
And based on my experience, such a low score in one category should have sunk the project in term of winning.

[FrankBuss]

I don't know if the contestants see this already, but would be interesting to make the voting matrix table public for a project. No need to list the judges, just as an information for the contestant and other interested persons how it scored in the different categories and how the final score was calculated.

[DimitriP]

if the judges were paying attention

<phone rings>
-Thank you for calling the DTTO explorer team. We are now famous and too busy to come to the phone right now, please leave a message.
-Yes,hello, this is Hackaday 2016. Once we sobered up and realized what we've done, we are taking our 150K back.

[Brumby]

I don't know if the contestants see this already, but would be interesting to make the voting matrix table public for a project. No need to list the judges, just as an information for the contestant and other interested persons how it scored in the different categories and how the final score was calculated.

While my curiosity might also find this idea appealing, revealing such information could be inviting a major headache.

At the moment, if the outcome appears puzzling, the only question that might be raised is "How did that win?".  However, with the detailed metrics being presented, I guarantee you there will be a Spanish Inquisition with each category open for criticism.

For the sake of the organisers, I'd be happy to leave the details a mystery.

[FrankBuss]

For the sake of the organisers, I'd be happy to leave the details a mystery.

It could be the opposite. If you see how the score is calculated, there might be less questions how this could win. Like some Olympic Game rating, where you even see how the individual judges vote, all open and transparent. And the judges might take more care to look at the projects, so that there could be less criticism for the individual categories as well. And if it turns out that a project can win, even if innovation has a zero rating (otherwise the winning project looks good, all documented, open source, well executed, good video etc.), it might even lead to better weightings or additional rules (wasn't there a rule that you can't submit a project which you submitted for the previous HaD contest, without major changes?). I think it would help current and future contestants to see in which categories they can do better, which will result in better entries. But I agree, would be more stressful for the judges. So just publishing the individual votes per category per judge, but without the judge names, might be a good compromise.

[Brumby]

That's a fair argument.

I can see both reactions manifesting if such details were to be released.  One wonders about which would dominate - but there's not much value in such a pursuit.