Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

I'd define holding coloured cards in front of a colour sensor as "influencing."

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

I don't think it's a good thing to let teams control their robot in autonomous, whether the game allows teams to interact with the opposing alliance in auto or not. Being able to react to something happening, like somebody beating you to the bridge in auto, a blocker robot deploying, or a missed intake for a two ball autonomous takes away the whole point of having autonomous mode. Give teams a few years, and they'll come up with a way to control the entire robot in autonomous mode.

I don't think allowing control of your robot with your kinect or webcam will even make robots more competitive/more interesting in auto. There were plenty of teams this year that didn't even bother moving forward in autonomous mode. I doubt there would be a significant increase in the number of moving robots in autonomous mode.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

I loved the Einstein chess match. It's definitely one of my favorite FRC moments of all time.

As far as the original question, I've actually been thinking about this for a while. One thing that I've noticed throughout my tenure in FRC is how FRC really is less of a programming competition, and more of a mechanical competition. Let me clarify: programming, yes, is vital to the final outcome of how a team performs. And don't forget the role of code in teleop either.

However, the effort/reward ratio for programming in FRC does is dissimilar to the effort/reward ratio for mechanical design, strategy, or even drive team training. As a programmer, I can name off some robot code that's been inspirational to me: 341's auto-aim SmartDash widget, 254's auto-climb sequence, and all of the crazy autonomous modes that are out there. 987's centerline in 2013 that would gracefully degrade to the 2pt goal was awesome, as was their autonomous scripting system. But I can name so many more robots, designs, or mechanical things that are just as inspirational. All of 67's, 254's, 469's, and 1114's robots. But when's the last time we, as a community, have celebrated true innovation in programming? Gordian is a fully implemented scripting language by 4334. 4334 also spent the time to completely rewrap WPI in the form of ATALibJ. 1540 has their own custom robot framework that's open source. When's the last time I've heard anyone post in awe of any of those things?

It's because that the subset of FRC people who can appreciate them is a much smaller fraction of the total population; additionally, it's hard to appreciate it because it's much more abstract than a linkage or a drivetrain. And it's not directly convertible to points. Innovation in code does not guarantee better robot performance. In reality, programming innovation has a habit of blowing up in the face of a humble high school programmer. The FRC just does not reward attempting top-notch programming.

This helps to define the effective ceiling for programming. Effective programming is transforming the robot from an expensive paperweight and making it controllable. Auto modes are just calls to the same code. Yes, teams can do better -- but the marginal reward for doing so is much lower at higher levels. The same is true for anything in FRC, but I have the distinct feeling that it's a much sharper decrease in reward than in other aspects of FRC. Part of the reason for this is because of the defined floor that we have too. WPILib makes it really, really hard to screw stuff up. This is intentional -- to have a massive, expensive paperweight is not how I would like anyone to spend their FRC season. But, at the same time, it makes programming easier, almost handed to you. The marginal effort for making a Talon spin a CIM is so low. Everyone does it. And non-robot stuff, like driver assist programs are great -- but I've noticed that my drivers are just fine (and often prefer) going it solo.

I see 'Hybrid modes' as rewarding more complex programming for improved control during autonomous. As I think that bringing the programming floor down is a major violation of GP, ethics, and morals, something has to be done to increase the rewards of programming. This is one such way.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

I'm curious then. Why do you think that so many teams used a Kinect/webcam this year in auto?

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

My opinion is that autonomous mode should actually be autonomous, and it should exist to challenge programmers in FIRST. Once you have a functional Kinect style setup working, then you can do almost anything in autonomous with very little effort (amazing goalie bots). However, I prototyped autonomous (actually autonomous) CV goalie bot code shortly after Kickoff: I used image processing in Matlab to prototype detection of either red or blue bumpers of other robots to either avoid enemy goalies or detect enemy shooters. This is a complicated system and would take much more tweaking to get it to work right compared to Cheesy Vision, but if teams were to accomplish a programming task such as this, I think it would in the end be a much more fulfilling and educational experience.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

The excitement of Einstein speaks for itself. Whether it's a Kinect, or CheesyVision, or four buttons like in 2008, tools to foster an autonomous chess match make the game more fun to watch from the start.

Is that still autonomous? By strict definitions, no--but we already stretch the definition of "robot" at times too.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

It could have been a chess match with or without vision-based inputs, though. 1114 could have programmed a mode that drove towards the hot goal, and all we used Cheesy Vision for was to select which side to drive towards. The actual path we drove was all autonomous.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

Sorry, that's not what I meant to write. We did use Cheesy Vision this year, and we always made a hot goal when we ran our 1 ball auto mode. Having control in autonomous mode is a competitive advantage. If we had it working at our first event, which we lost by 2 points, we would have won. I meant to say that robots that do use kinect/webcam control are more competitive, but that I don't think it will do much to solve the issue of robots just sitting there in auto.

With the exception of the Einstein finals, which are 3 out of the 10,655 matches played this year, how many of them were more exciting to watch because of kinect control? At least for this years game, shooting in a hot goal is not particularly more exciting than shooting in the not hot goal for most spectators.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

No problem. I thought that you were trying to say something along these lines. I agree that immobile auto robots is still a big issue in FRC, and that having or not having Kinect/webcam during auto will likely have no appreciable impact on this problem.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

It was more consistent than letting the robot sense the objects on the field. Hot goals were shaky at best, and the way they were designed hampered even the best vision systems. Also, teams like 1114 and 973 wanted to react to other robots.

If we decide that any control is unacceptable in Autonomous, we also need to ensure that our robots can get all the information they need from the field. Vision targets need to be consistent.

We also need a consistent way to sense other robots, something that has to be put on every robot. Perhaps retro-reflective stickers on bumpers, motion-capture markers on the robot, or something like the trailers from 2009.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

Goalie bots were OP with kinect.

Half our blocking was done by guessing where our opponents would shoot (from scouting data), and driving there with encoders and a number we selected on driverstation after the robots lined up.

This would have been reasonable, and still resulted in the SAME einstein chess match.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

My feelings exactly. If they want to allow other "indirect" forms of control then call it hybrid mode. When I hear autonomous mode the first assumption I make is that the robots will be autonomous.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

In principle, I think autonomous means autonomous and it should be that way. On the other hand, I like the incentive for teams to be working with stuff outside the norm (like Kinect and CV stuff). I'm divided over whether it should still be a part of autonomous/hybrid mode or a different part, but overall I liked that Einstein chess match as much as the next FIRSTer.

So I guess I would be in the "Yes, but don't call it autonomous mode" category.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

I disagree. Nowadays, robots are much less mechanical and a lot more electrical. For example, every single design we prototyped this year for shooting the ball was used effectively by some top team. We essentially arbitrarily used a catapult. Top teams are all very well engineered, however, at one point it stops being effective to maximize strength and it becomes more useful to program.
However, using PID drive controls, automatic shifting, swerve drives, etc. are all primarily electrical now. Programming plays a very large part in how a robot performs, whereas mechanical can only go so far. Top teams have good code.

I vote no for using kinect/ vision control for auton. This is because if programmed well enough, autonomous can easily become just an extended teleop with little effort, especially for defensive autons.

Re: The use of the Kinect and Cheesy Vision in 2015 and beyond
 

We spent weeks integrating a camera solution for auto mod this year. We got it working on the practice field, but never had time to calibrate it on the field at champs (I wish they would let us calibrate every morning instead of Thursday only. We got it working Thursday around lunch). The idea that something as simple as open source code and a web cam would be better than the a robot running truly autonomously galls me. Please, remove the de facto hybrid mode for next year.