For the sake of compleness let me copy/paste the current state of discussion from the PR to here:
aquahika:
Please describe your change in one or two sentences
Omnidirectional lenses must be designed and manfactured by students.
Please explain why do you think this change should be in the rules
Some of the team designed an omnidirectional lens by themselves but delegated manufacturing to >professional metal processing and polishing companies. The prices in various but around hundreds of >euros or dollars. It’s still not “commercial”, but also not made by students.
My idea is we argue that the omnidirectional lens must be designed and produced including polishing >by students and prohibit outsourcing production to other companies or adults.
[misunderstanding about mirrors and lenses omitted for brevity]
dbscoach (me):
Oh, I see. Do we think there is a serious advantage to be gained by means of expensive mirrors if cheap cameras + fisheye lenses allow having reasonable resolution for much cheaper?
JavadRah:
I think we must change our perspective.
It does not mean that we force the students to polish the mirror themselves.
Everyone relies on a part of the robot according to their requirements, some of them have good electronics, another team for accurate shooting, Another team works on the communication between their two robots, and a team on their mirror. Normally, the student cannot reach all these matters with the limited time he has and only focuses on one or two parts.
This is the feature of RoboCup Junior that allows creativity to grow. Putting extra rules will only kill creativity.
We do not want to force students in the direction we want. We must respect their freedom of action.
dbscoach (me):
@JavadRah Consider this: The current draft of the rules (see 2023 Draft Rules Public Discussion #soccer-rules-2023) contains language permitting multiple cameras, fisheye lenses and any kind of bough optical components. We know for a fact that very good but very expensive ready-made mirrors exist. The question is now wether these will give teams that are able to buy them an unfair advantage over teams that use the new freedoms in vision system components but with less available money. If that is the case we would want to prohibit using these expensive mirrors by way of the changes introduced in this PR. What do you think? Will expensive mirrors be used and will they be so effective as to be an unfair advantage over teams that have only cheaper cameras and fisheye lenses?