Favorite Autonomous Mode

[George A.]

Since Team 11 had those nifty shirts showing their love of autonomous mode, that got me thinking. What team had your favorite autonomous mode of all time? Not the actual part of the game but which team had the one that made you go "OMFG!!! How could they do that?!?!"

Here's my picks for each year:

Stack Attack: Wildstang, handsdown how can you compete with someone that takes out all your stacks AND gets on top of the ramp in 15 secs?

First Frenzy: 190 Gompei and the Herd. Geting on the bar in autonomous every time is hard to compete with especially when they can play solid defense once up there.

Triple Play: I forget the team number, but the team that capped the center home goal, knocked off the side hanging tetra CAUGHT the hanging tetra and then capped the corner goal...unbelievable.

So that's mine...what's yours?

P.S. you don't have to have one for each year, these were just my favorites.

[SizzelChest330]

Triple Play!
By far Thunderbots! (980) nobody came close to how awesome they were!!!
First they cap the center home row with the pre-loaded tetra
Next the swing there are over and take the hanging tetr, pull it out and stack on top of the corner goal
Then they drive out and stand in front of the Auto-Loader!
This is by far the best

Second would be Double deuce! (22)
They were able to start with a tetra
Turn around
Cap the center
spin 180" and fork there arm into the hanging tetra
pull back and cap the corner goal...

Thirdly i would say Wildstang (111)
There camera would search for all the positions where the vision tetras are placed.
next it would run a dead-reckon for wherever the tetra was placed and drive to it and stack it (it came so close to)

Theres my top 3

my 3 cents... :D

[David Guzman]

I belief you are talking about 980 unless there is another one.
I have to agree they had one of the best ones. Also 233 could knock down and grab 2 tetras from the auto loader in auto mode, that was impresive too.
So my votes are 233 and 980

Dave

[Quatitos]

My favorite autonomous mode would have to go to team 66 for their use of the camera which I have gotten to see cap side goals in person on several occasions. To me something just seems boring about dead reckoning. Their dynamic manuevering produced by their homing in on the tetra was just so exciting to watch. When it picked it up so smooth and when it goes down its just amazing to watch it slide on. I only wish that they had succeeded in capping the center goal once, to make all that hard work worth it.

[Redneck]

I used to be real proud of my autonomous (cap corner goal with the pre-loaded tetra, knock down hanging tetra, drive to human loader), but 980's totally blew me away.

[George A.]

Don't forget people you have three different seasons from which to pick from.

[Arefin Bari]

Stack Attack 2003:

Heatwave (312): they used to get all the boxes on their side.

Wildstang (111): one hell of a spider drive which smashed into the wall of boxes in less than 5 seconds.

FIRST Frenzy 2004:

Wildstang (111): Such a sweet way to knock off the 10 point ball.

B.E.A.S.T (71): Were very constant with their autonomous mode.

Triple Play 2005:

Think Pink (233): Knocked side tetra off, went to the loading zone... grabbed two tetras.

Sie H2o Bot (237): They have a really sweet robot with a very effective arm which were able to find the vision tetra using the camera and capped the side goals several times. They also got very close to cap the middle goal.

... please keep in mind that I haven't seen EVERY single bot in action during autonomous.

[Mini-D67]

I loved our auton at nationals last year...

1) Slide down the wall
2) Go straight, turn, go straight, turn go straight to goal
3) Grab goal, clamp down, lift onto high torque wheels
4) While #3 is going, the arm is raising to the ball
5) Grab ball and lift it 9 feet in the air, ready to go steal opponents dropped balls :yikes:

http://www2.huronvalley.k12.mi.us/schools/mhs/activity/hot_team/2004_schedule_files/5nat%20(3).JPG

Ahh, thse were the days!

[Rombus]

I'm partial to my teams practice auto mode:

Our programmer didn't realize how far 1/2 a second of full forward would take us. What we WANTED It to do was go forward and backward to shake down our arm, then turn and smack the hanging tetra. This is what really happened:
Go forward about 6 feet
Go Backward about 2 feet, in the process poping a wheelie
Attempt to turn to the right, while still in wheelie, doing a wheelie spin jump move
Stop just shy of the auto loader station.

I was scouting at the i saw our first practice match, i loved the dance, and was surprised how close he got to the auto loader station. Well i went down to talk to him, and i told him how close he got to the autoloader, he thought i was joking, since the team was going for the hanging tetra, not the autoloader :D

The dance was awesome, since we were at the verge of tipping over, but never did.

[JBotAlan]

I liked our team's. I am the writer of my code, and I had been all morning trying to get it to do something like what I coded (or thought I had coded) it to do. Much like the previous one. I finally got it working, but all the times wereoff. Drive out about 6 feet, rotate the turret about 7 times around in a circle, ripping out the power for the pneumatic claw, and rotate the wheels 3-4 rotations. This totally messed up the rest of the match. But I got to see our cool senior driver FREAK OUT :yikes:

[Beth Sweet]

I loved 66 and 33 this year.

66 capped a vision in autonomous, I beleive in a first week regional.

33 was so accurate it made you sweat. Cap, knock down, drive forward, just like it was nothing.

[CmptrGk]

i also like 930's autonomous mode.

but one of my favorites were the ones that i hadn't written for our robot. Yes, during at least two of our matches we were running autonomous modes that had not yet been written. the drive team had selected the "drive anywhere but here" mode, and the robot goes out to the middle of the field, turns toward the human player load, drives in and stops just in time.

at this point in the stands I'm saying "That cant happen, that autonomous hasn't been written yet!!!!". Then this happened again during our first quarter finals match. Andy Brockway and i think that we have a slightly messed up RC. When the robot got back to the pit everyone was saying "Great autonomous Dillon". i replied with "Um, it hasn't been written yet". Our operator Rammie then said that it proved that our robot had a mind of its own.


my favorite of all of my teams autonomous modes was the goal capping one. we were the first team at UTC to cap a goal during autonomous. it was an insanely simple autonomous mode, all it used were counters.(I'm a rookie programmer didn't have time to figure out all that fancy analog stuff) The limit switches didn't even want to work, but that is a completely different story. which i will not share here because of its complete stupidity.
we also managed to get a triple play several times during autonomous.

[xzvrw2]

I liked ours and team 980s auto mode this year. What we did was knock down the hanging tetra then drive over to the auto loader and pick one up. And i think every one knows what 980 does.

In 2004 I liked 330 (I think it was you guys) and 71s auto mode. 330 got into hanging position, onto of the platform and all, in auto mode. And 71 drove over to the ball dropper and waited for the balls to drop.

In 2003 I liked 111 and 16s auto mode. 111 could knock over stacks where every they were at on the field and still make it up the ramp before other teams. And team 16 they got up the ram in like 2.5 seconds and started spinning around in circles.


Those are my picks for the three yeas of auto mode.

[SuperJake]

Triple Play: I forget the team number, but the team that capped the center home goal, knocked off the side hanging tetra CAUGHT the hanging tetra and then capped the corner goal...unbelievable.

MOEbius from 365 does that. If I remember, it catches the hanging tetra about 50% of the time. Here is a picture from Pittsburgh:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/pics/bin/111106382441.jpg

When I was doing the video for Philly, we liked this auto program because the 'bot spun around a lot and looked like it was dancing. We never used the footage, but it was worth a mention.

[Joshua May]

2003: Team 60, they would quickly drive up to the top of the ramp, knocking all bins onto their side, and block the entire ramp for the whole duration of the match.

2004: Team 980, they would knock off the 10-point ball and grap a 2x ball ready to cap any goal, it worked flawlessly every time.

2005: Team 980 or 233.

[Collmandoman]

easiest question ever
best autonomous ever goes to....
190 last year~ completly unique, great strategical advantage - just brilliant

[Ian Curtis]

2003: Wild Stang (it was the only one I remembered, hence I must have liked it)

2004: Gompei and the HERD (Just plain smart and simple)

2005: The Pink Team (233) Wow Just Wow

[Alan Anderson]

I have a special fondness for the TechnoKats 2004 "First Frenzy" autonomous routine that scooped the ten-point ball off the tee for later delivery to the human player.

(I'm not saying it's the best automode I've seen, but the question asked for our favorite.)

[SURVIVORfan44]

2004 - I liked 33's autonomous. They basically were guaranteed to get the ten point ball during autonomous. They got their box-shaped robot to just drive by and have a wire looking thing to just knock both balls off. I sat there and thought, why didn't anyone else think about that?! Last year, our autonomous worked EVERY single time we practiced at school and then we got to the competition and it worked sometimes.

2005- Definitely 980 and 233. Everyone knows the reasons. ;)

[Crash&Burn]

Im going to have to hand it to Pink (233?)on this one, the autonomous mode loading two tetras from the loading docks in 15 seconds... Its a beautiful thing to watch. *golf claps for Pink's programmers*

[Bill_Hancoc]

I definatley liked 66's auto.. if im not mistaken they did cap a center goal at Great Lakes just seconds before the auto.. time peroid ended.

[danield710]

2003-111 definitely; they had an amazing autononous that year
2004-not really any favorites from that year
2005-233-they would knock down the tetra then go the autoloader and pick up two tetras, when i first saw it at ucf i was amazed
111-one of the only teams that got the camera working, i was on the field one match were the came so close to capping a vision tetra on the center goal
22-they would cap the center home goal then turn around and knock down the tetra (i forget which order they did it in but i remember that they did those 2 things in auto)

[techtiger1]

190 in 2004 for sure. 233 And 980 in 2005 though they were amazing very nice. Pink was loading two from the autoloader at the archmedies finals on saturday it was pretty crazy and 980 well I dunno words don't explain that one, video anyone to show it to the others who weren't privileged to see it. :ahh:

[StephLee]

The autonomous mode I'm going to remember for the rest of my life would have to be the first time we tried ours out at a drive practice session. Apparently, the programmers didn't think to set the speed lower than they thought it should be the first time and work up; they set it at full. We turned it on, and the next thing we knew it was zooming across the field. It nearly decapitated our driver, scared the living daylights out of a few grandparents and younger sibs on the sidelines, and pretty much pinned a mentor to the wall.

The moral of the story: too slow is better than too fast in the case of autonomous testing.

[Ali Ahmed]

My all-time favorite auton has to be 190's in 2004. It was just amazing to see them perfectly get to the bar, not the easiest job with a 30" wide robot in a 32" wide path and hang perfectly. It was perfect.

[Paul H]

2003: Wildstang...In the national finals mode when they knocked down both stacks and went to the top of the ramp....I pretty much knew who was winning that one!

2004: Technokats were the only ones that I remember to bring the 10 pt ball into play, which I thought was pretty cool.

It may not seem like it, but we (33) used almost every robot function in our 2004 auto mode....shift to high, drive to ball tee, deploy whips, articulate chassis to prevent tipping, run ball-o-fier to suck up any balls in the way, shift to low, reverse, move chassis back to normal driving position, and reel the hanging hook out....all while keeping track of wheel rotation and angular rotation. I was pretty impressed with what Kevin and Jim were able to do...especially without a prectice bot or any pre-ship time to code.

2005: 33's cap the center and knock down the side one was pretty cool, I was impressed when I saw that one. The video I saw of 980 looked pretty awesome too, great job!

[henryBsick]

Thirdly i would say Wildstang (111)
There camera would search for all the positions where the vision tetras are placed.
next it would run a dead-reckon for wherever the tetra was placed and drive to it and stack it (it came so close to)
Wow, I am soooooo happy I heard that. I have been preaching that style mode since week 4, read the pwm value once the camera has a find and the run one of 8 pre-programmed "dead reckoning" modes, and I am not even a programmer :p .

Back on topic, 980's auto is quite insane, I was pitted right next to the practice field and saw them working all the kinks out of it till it was perfect....and insane. Kudos to the 980 coder, you guys have an awesome auto every year. :D

Also.... to ANY team that even TRIED to use the camera for the vision tets, I congratulate you.

[the_short1]

what happened this year HOT >? .. . did you guys run outa memory to include an autom ? i know that drive control code must be HUGE!.. still sweet how you guys start verticle! eheh !

i love team 66s autom! i saw it cap side goals in great lakes.. and i wish they were able to score the points in champs *they capped it but their arm wasn;t removed it time for points*..

. our robot was able to cape the center home row goal with a preloaded and i thought taht was pretty cool.. but ..then i saw some of these teams .. and i was like WHOLE CRAP!.. i liked 1680s auto how they cap the center home with preloaded then knock down the hanging tetra with a BROOMSTICK! ahha! YEA! . . they were awsome in toronto .. our alliance made a record for the FASTEST home row,, under 4 seconds... we knock down one sid.e. 1680 other side and middle.. it was cool!

[Dave Flowerday]

Wow, I am soooooo happy I heard that. I have been preaching that style mode since week 4, read the pwm value once the camera has a find and the run one of 8 pre-programmed "dead reckoning" modes, and I am not even a programmer :p .
Actually, our autonomous program only uses dead-reckoning to reach the tetra, and that is primarily because our camera is mounted on our lift which is in the process of tilting out while we're driving to it, which causes enough shaking in the camera that if we try to use it for driving it gets very erratic. Once we've picked up the tetra, though, we use vision to drive to the goal (unless the goal is out of the camera's field of view, then it automatically falls back to dead reckoning until the goal is within view).

Back on topic, my favorite autonomous modes this year were from Pink (only saw them on the practice field in the pits, but dang was it fast!) and the Huskies (team 65). Both picked up off the autoloader in autonomous which in retrospect is what our team should have worked on. It would have been much more beneficial to us to start the match with two tetras in hand.

[ThunderChief]

My team, ThunderBots, had a really good autonomous mode at the Championships, but it was disappointing that we could not get our vision tetra routine to be 100% reliable. We spent a great deal of time on it. :mad: With our practice robot in our workshop, we were able to have the camera find a vision tetra, drive to it, pick it up and cap the center middle goal. We did it several times. But, of course, it needed a little help from hand-held spot lights to illuminate the colored triangles and the disable switch was useful when it took off in the wrong direction....:ahh: Much of the time we could get pretty close. Since we had feedback controls for each of the arm movements, the autonomous program we did use was very reliable and easier than the vision tetra version.

But, my personal favorite was in the 2003 Stack Attack game. From the starting position our robot, Yoda, swung a long gravity-assisted telescoping arm that toppled all but the far stack of bins into our side before any robot could make it up the ramp. Many opponents got stuck in the "Sea of Bins". The only way to retract the ginormous arm was to raise it straight up so gravity would pull it back together and a latch would keep it stowed for the rest of the match. Then, still in autonomous, we would drive up the ramp, over the platform, extend 2 wide arms and push all the bins down the ramp.

In 2004, Team 190, Gompei and the HERD, had the most complex and amazing autonomous. The whole robot was designed to make it work.

[Bill Moore]

Okay, my favorite is biased, but so what.

2003 Stack Attack. Autonomous is introduced as a major component of the game. My son, Josh, who had been doing general electrical stuff for two years becomes the student leader for autonomous.

First Regional, Chesapeake -- autonomous routines are written as "dead reckoning" routines. GeroniMOE is able to win the race to the wall, and take most of it over about 75% of the time. Good but not good enough.

Second Regional, Philadelphia -- a gyro is mounted to GeroniMOE and autonomous codes are changed to make use of gyro. GeroniMOE still wins race to wall, and effectively captures the wall about 90% of the time. Unfortunately, robot doesn't stop, and in 15 seconds goes too far and hits the player station wall--HARD. (Actually hits at the 9-10 second mark.)

Championships, Houston -- autonomous code is modified to watch the elevation changes as GeroniMOE goes up and down the ramps, and either stops partway down the second ramp, or at the bottom. (Thereby avoiding any robot damage from hitting player station wall.)

Watching Josh work as the lead student, writing and improving the autonomous code as the season progressed, definitely had a very personal satisfaction for me. That year will always be my favorite for autonomous modes.

(I believe they had 12 modes that year, but mainly only used 3 or 4. This years robot had something unbelieveable like 32 or 36 modes, but once again we mainly used 3 or 4 routines. We even had a routine to stop a capper on the center goal in autonomous, just in case, but never had to break it out.)

[SuperJake]

Championships, Houston -- autonomous code is modified to watch the elevation changes as GeroniMOE goes up and down the ramps, and either stops partway down the second ramp, or at the bottom. (Thereby avoiding any robot damage from hitting player station wall.)

I remember one of the modes we used in Houston was a quick hook straight back to knock down any human player stacks that may have been up. Wildstang had erected a 6-bin stack on our side because no one had seen us do the hook mode. When we did it, the look on the Wildstang driver's faces was priceless. Josh was a really awesome programmer.

[krunch79prez]

2003- I loved 312 autonomous mode, they would go up the ramp and take out every box on the ramp, it was pretty impressive to me.

2004- None really stand out

2005- I thought 233 PINK's autonomous mode was awesome when they picked two off the autoloader.

[George A.]

[QUOTE=krunch79prez]2004- None really stand outQUOTE]

You've got to be kidding, not to sound mean or anything but Gompei was the best auto mode ever. Gettting on the bar everytime in autonomous is jaw droppingly amazing...sorry just my ranting and raving.

[Paul H]

[QUOTE=krunch79prez]2004- None really stand outQUOTE]

You've got to be kidding, not to sound mean or anything but Gompei was the best auto mode ever. Gettting on the bar everytime in autonomous is jaw droppingly amazing...sorry just my ranting and raving.

It was cool, but in my opinion (not to sound mean) it was a waste of a match...there was so much to do last year, why do something like that where you limit your robot to scoring 50 points? Put that autonomous mode up against any robot that actually does stuff for a whole match THEN hangs and 190 loses. In my mind, a great autonomous mode is more focused on helping win the match than just being cool.

I can imagine that it would be pretty boring to be their 2004 drivers when they ran that auto mode. Nothing to do at all for the whole match.

It was pretty darn cool though. :yikes:

[George A.]

They didn't just do that, They had an arm that picked up the 2x ball off the middle platform and could cap your stationary goal, or they could use that arm to decap your opponents stationary goal. Also they had flaps that could prevent your opponents to hang from the bar. Couple that with your herding ability you had a pretty awesome allaince. Check out Curie Qf2_m1 on soap 108 last year if you want more proof. That's all for me, let's return this to the primary focus of this thread.

[Rob27]

2003: 111 - it was the only one i saw that did more than just drive up the ramp (and worked)

2004: 47 - they drove out, grabbed the goal, and lifted the ball. simple and effective

2005: anyone who could cap the center and knock the side i only saw 33, 980 (who wins by capping the side, too), 494, and 27, but i'm sure there were more.

Also, auto loader autons were pretty cool, we got one to work sat. afternoon in atlanta that could pick up an auto loader tetra and cap the side goal, but we only proved it out on the blue side and were eleminated before we got a chance to try it. We'll tweak it out at IRI.

Personally, I didn't care for the vision tetra autons. The whole system was too inconsistant for me. Congrats to anyone who go it to work, though.

[UlTiMaTeP]

Here's my picks for each year:

Stack Attack: Wildstang, handsdown how can you compete with someone that takes out all your stacks AND gets on top of the ramp in 15 secs?

P.S. you don't have to have one for each year, these were just my favorites.

Stack Attack 2003:

Heatwave (312): they used to get all the boxes on their side.

Wildstang (111): one hell of a spider drive which smashed into the wall of boxes in less than 5 seconds.

... please keep in mind that I haven't seen EVERY single bot in action during autonomous.

I know Arefin forgets I bet, but the fastest robot in the land of the stack attack year was my old team, 710. 6 wheel drive 2 wheel steering was added to make the robot do a 8 foot radius (amount needed to clear the ramp wall and drive up) in under 4 seconds. Our problem was we knocked 3/4 of the boxes over, and that was great. But we didn't know what to do with the other 11 seconds so we just sat at the top! The flaw in our game plan, and in fact almost everyone's game plan, was the fact that the king of the hill was far more important than stacking ever was

[Joe Domingo]

2003: 111 - it was the only one i saw that did more than just drive up the ramp (and worked)

2004: 47 - they drove out, grabbed the goal, and lifted the ball. simple and effective

2005: anyone who could cap the center and knock the side i only saw 33, 980 (who wins by capping the side, too), 494, and 27, but i'm sure there were more.

Also, auto loader autons were pretty cool, we got one to work sat. afternoon in atlanta that could pick up an auto loader tetra and cap the side goal, but we only proved it out on the blue side and were eleminated before we got a chance to try it. We'll tweak it out at IRI.

Personally, I didn't care for the vision tetra autons. The whole system was too inconsistant for me. Congrats to anyone who go it to work, though.


We just posted a short movie of our autonomous in Atlanta http://www.team980.com/#automovie2 .

[Timmyd]

i liked 980's and ours BUT i did notice that thier was a differance from the practice field to compition fields carpet so our autonomous did not work every time.

[slickguy2007]

I liked 254's autonomous. They capped the center goal and knocked the hanging tetra off the goal. They were consistent in every match and most of the time after autonomous, 254's side would have a row. They have always been great with autonomous. In 2004, I don't remember anyone who could knock that 10pt ball off as fast and as consistently as they did. I also like 980's autonomous this year and last year. I remember seeing them grab the 2x multiplier and knock off the 10 pt ball last year. When I saw that I was simply amazed. Good job guys!

GO 1403!!!

[Meyerman]

2003- wildstang that thing was amazing to watch i only watch clips but it was just sooo fast to the top of the ramp.

2004- i love our automode on 56 we only went up against one other team that did it im sure others did it tho, we went out grabed our movable and brought it back under the ball drop and the arm also moved into position to uncap the 2x ball this auto mode really helped us win a lot of matches.

2005- i watch 233 that was an awsome auto but from what im hearing 980 is tops. and of coarse im gunna hafta mention 237 they were one of the few to cap vision in auto altough it wasnt center they did what not too many others could great job 237!

[ShaneP]

For 2005, Wildstang was my favorite. They had the whole crowd cheering when they almost had a vision tetra stacked in autonomous mode. That was one of my favorite moments of all of nationals. They had a great looking bot. Another great autonomous mode was, I think 1466. They had the vision tetra stacked twice from what I saw of them, but just hadn't seated properly on the center goal.

I wish I would have seen 980's. I hear it was totally awsome.

[Mini-D67]

what happened this year HOT >? .. . did you guys run outa memory to include an autom ? i know that drive control code must be HUGE!.. still sweet how you guys start verticle! eheh !


Thats exactly what happened... with our drivetrain and arm programming (plus all the other goodies - motion filters, preset position buttons etc etc) we only had like 12% (iirc) of the memory left... kinda limited our auton abilities:ahh:

[Masterfork]

thanks we did have some trouble at nats with ours but we managed to fix them by the finals. man Andy and Mike is going to be so happy people like his autonomous. thanks you guys :)

[DougHogg]

For 2005, Wildstang was my favorite. They had the whole crowd cheering when they almost had a vision tetra stacked in autonomous mode. That was one of my favorite moments of all of nationals. They had a great looking bot. Another great autonomous mode was, I think 1466. They had the vision tetra stacked twice from what I saw of them, but just hadn't seated properly on the center goal.

I wish I would have seen 980's. I hear it was totally awsome.

Because you said the magic words ("I wish" - we are very big on wishing);) , you get to see Team 980's autonomous mode PLUS a bonus: our awesome Thunderbolt animation.:ahh:

Go to http://www.team980.com to see the thunderbolt, then click on "Championship Results". You will see links for TWO movies of our autonomous mode, one in our workshop (that movie is pretty funny at the end), and the other showing our autonomous in Atlanta in Match 76 on the Archimedes field.

(By the way, your team is mentioned just below that.):rolleyes:

:)

Doug Hogg

[ShaneP]

Because you said the magic words ("I wish" - we are very big on wishing) , you get to see Team 980's autonomous mode PLUS a bonus: our awesome Thunderbolt animation.

Go to http://www.team980.com to see the thunderbolt, then click on "Championship Results". You will see links for TWO movies of our autonomous mode, one in our workshop (that movie is pretty funny at the end), and the other showing our autonomous in Atlanta in Match 76 on the Archimedes field.

(By the way, your team is mentioned just below that.)

Thank you for that. I just remembered........ We will be seeing you in San Diego. I will be sure to see it live then..... ;)

Thanks

[Juju1031]

My favorite autonomous mode is team 492 because they would drive to the autoloader and grab a tetra then take it back and place it on the left home goal And I also love team 22 auto mode, they were great

[Juju1031]

In 2004 my favorite auto mode was team 254, 60, and22

[Chris Sturrock]

I was really busy at nats, being the driver and all, and I didn't get to see many autonomous modes. but personally, I liked ours (1503), simbotics (1114), and Fesstronics (1680). We capped home center, knocked down the hanging, and the ran to an auto loader and picked up a tetra.