Twitching Robot

[railerobotics]

When we turn on our robot starts to twitch. The trim is set correctly and the speed controls are calibrated so I'm guessing its programming related. Any Help?

[Jared Russell]

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "twitch"?

[ahecht]

It sounds like you have too much traction on your wheels. As you turn, your robots wheels must move sideways, and if there is too much traction on your wheels, your robot must fight against this traction, resulting in either the robot appearing to turn in "jumps" or to trip your circuit breakers, either of which could be described as "twitching".

What is your driveline like (number of wheels, dimensions, wheel sizes, wheel material/type, motors, etc)?

[CmptrGk]

or are you perhaps talking about a sudden jolt of motor movement as soon as the robot is turned on? we had a similar problem last year and were unable to find a solution.

[Andrew Blair]

Does the "twitch" cut in and out? If it does, is there a clicking noise when it cuts out? This would indicate what ahecht said, that breakers are cutting in and out.

[Dillon Compton]

I believe the motor jolt was corrected with a RC firmware update midseason. We updated to the newest firmware, and that cleared our issue up, if I remember correctly.

[BuddyB309]

Too much caffine. Cut down on the robots intake of coffea.

[Stats]

just give up its way easyer that way but seriously we had the problem of our robot jumping because our wheels were to wide that might be your problem

[KenWittlief]

make sure all the variables you use for motor control are initialized before the main loop runs.

at powerup all variables have random numbers - so if you created an equation like:

motorPWM = joystick Y + offset

and offset is not set to a defined number until the loop runs once, then motorPWM can be anything from 0 to 255 on the first pass through the codes main loop.