Yaw rate sensor (gyro for the layperson)

[Kris Verdeyen]

Has anyone come up with a decent use for the gyro this year?

Personally, I think it would be cool if a team used it to control a holonomic (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~pprk/) base (can move or spin in any direction). So that the operator didn't have to put himself in the Robot's frame, just point the joystick in the direction that he wanted the Robot to go. But that's not necessarily specific to this game.

[JVN]

Possible Gyro Use this year:

Ballast....

haha ;)

[Skanker]

as cool as that would be (thinking of an orb-bot), it would, in this game be useless. anyway, I don't think there really *is* a purpose for it at all this year... unless you have an arm or something whose yaw rate you want to sense?

[Joe Johnson]

MANY teams use the yaw rate sensor to compensate between the two sides of the robot so that the machine will stay going in a straight line.

We have used in on a number of machines. It works very well. A machine that tends to spin into a "death spiral" can be made into a pretty well behaved machine with feedback from the yaw rate sensor.

Joe J.

[ahecht]

One of our mentors in convinced that we can build a two-wheel-drive segway to solve our turning radius problems with the gyro chip. However, we tend not to take that mentor that seriously ;).