New Sensors?
 

There is a lot of talk of new motors being introduced next season or what we can look forward to in terms of drive control. I'd like to pose another question. To my favorite kind of people.

What kinds of sensors would you like to see FIRST introduce in the KOP or FIRST Choice to enhance the abilities of teams to create more intricate autonomous programs or even more hybrid driven robots that make more accurate decisions based on better data?

Re: New Sensors?
 

I would love to see the field provide some technology (there are many ways to do this) to enable location tracking. The ability to do a GPS-style determination of the robots location could really enable some cool stuff!

Re: New Sensors?
 

I'd love to see a class 1 laser distance switch (25 foot range), but they're pricey.

Re: New Sensors?
 

This probably isn't very feasible, but what I would love to see is a grid of weight sensors under the field that could tell your robot where all of the other robots were. Then i would have a 10-15 second autonomous period, followed by a minute of optional autonomous, if your robot stayed autonomous in this period you would get a bonus on each item scored. The game would have to be noncooperative as the weight sensors would not tell you the alliance of the robot. I think that it would be practical to have a fully autonomous robot in this minute period without too huge of a score bonus and while it might be hard to explain to spectators, it would definitely draw middle leveled team's attention to the control system. I've noticed that the most amazing teams always have a basically perfect autonomous program, 1114 in 2008, 67 in 2012, 254 this year, and I think most teams don't think about this as much as they should early in the design stage (I know my team hasn't). I doubt any of this will happen, but it would be pretty cool in my opinion.

Re: New Sensors?
 

To get really good auto programs, provide an over head camera view of the field like in robocup. However I don't think this would change the game that much and would be very hard to standardize from event to event. Perhaps field mounted cameras on each end that robots have access to over the network.

Re: New Sensors?
 

I'd love to see them add a LIDAR of some sort. They are basically a given in most autonomous navigation competitions.

I've been looking for FRC friendly LIDAR options. I'm looking at obtaining one of these for experimentation this fall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zgn-GuVt3A

Datasheet:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/document/...r_brief_en.pdf

For sale here:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/RPL...it-p-1823.html

They come in just under the budget restrictions and use a laser that is out of the visible spectrum. It'll probably require some hardening to help it survive field conditions.

You might be able to use something like this as a laser switch, it is also out of the visible spectrum so should be safe.
https://store.3drobotics.com/products/lidar-lite/

Datasheet:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwbD...pvTFdEZnM/edit

Re: New Sensors?
 

Lydars are really nice. I wish it was something that we could use as well. I was a part of a NASA Centennial Challenge team and we used a low end Lydar...which still costs over 1K. So I'm not sure we'll see one in FRC for quite some time.

Lydar: http://www.robotshop.com/en/hokuyo-u...aign=GoogleUSA

Re: New Sensors?
 

I'd love to see a drive gearbox that has the motors, speed controller, and encoder built in. And talks CAN. I think this would allow teams to do some neat stuff out of the box with just software and little chance of messing things up mechanically/electrically.

Re: New Sensors?
 

I agree this is a great idea. 250 lbf-in stall torque and 1000 rev/min free speed would be just about right. 9 Ampere free current should be feasible using good gears, with 12 Volt supply.

This online community could field several development teams with the engineering chops to make such a thing happen. What would it take to get a design competition off the ground? An RFP from Dean? :cool:

Re: New Sensors?
 

looks pretty sweet... 2 notes to make sure you don't have issues with inspection:
- make sure you bring a copy of the datasheet with you so your inspector can see it's class 1
- take a careful look at the included "motor system" odds are you'll need to swap out the motor that's included for an FRC legal motor!

Re: New Sensors?
 

I really wouldn't be surprised if Vex/AM tries to get something out like this to teams by Kickoff.

Re: New Sensors?
 

LightWare makes very affordable Arduino compatible laser rangefinders :) My team isn't convinced we need one, though
What about a camera looking down at the field suspended above it? It would just be a media server. Teams could utilize a cheap camera supplied in the kit of parts during the build season to practice with the system, and make the switch to an identical secure system during competition.

Re: New Sensors?
 

I like the idea, though if there was a modular version it would be cheaper to fix when it breaks. Still, a gearbox that a team could just bolt the motor(s) and all-in-one drive electronics unit onto would put the team pretty close to ready-to go.

Especially if there was also a CAN Backbone + Power Distribution combo unit that could combine power and CAN connectivity into a single cable. Or some sort of 12V variant of USB would work nicely too.

Re: New Sensors?
 

For most shooting games, it would be useful (Aerial Assist being the exception). That said, $300 is expensive.

I'm not sure there's a need for new KOP sensors. As is, we don't use the limit switches provided. We've done pretty well buying sensors we find online. We used prox switches ($8) and prox sensors ($12) this year to great effect for us.

Re: New Sensors?
 

Take a look at these. I'm not sure what you mean in the sense of GPS style tracking, but maybe one of these could help.

http://www.bosch-sensortec.com/de/ho...cts_3/products