What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We have a very hopeful plan where we get our alliance mates to simply move to the autozone, then we'll stack the totes and put all three bins in the autozone in one 13-second sweep. It works fine in the model we made... but we all know how that can go astray.

So, what's everyone planning to do during auto? Take care of your own bin and tote? Just move the bot? Something bigger?

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We plan to do the same thing for our primary autonomous routine... We'll have a couple or three others that will target the totes and RC's in the center so that we can work with pretty much anybody.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We have many possible autonomous modes included in our code... We will choose depending on our allies and change it from our driver station... Here's a couple of examples :

1. Move forward (with a selector for the distance)
2. Don't move (if we have any problem on the robot or if an alliance wants to do something special)
3. Take a container and move forward
4. Take a container, move forward and put it down

And every other possibility you can't think about... We coded a nice looking dashboard showing which auto mode is in use, its description and where to place the robot on the field...

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Try to get as many green bins from the center step into our side of the field as possible. Assuming our alliance can stack totes the bins really can add to the score.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Use sensors to collect data about the surrounding environment, then discard it and drive into walls.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

You downgraded to that? Last time I heard you skipped the whole collecting data and discarding it to just drive into walls. More efficient that way.



I think we're going to be moving. Not sure exactly what we'll be moving...

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

score points.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

This read like an old spotlighted post.

Anyways, we plan to a set of switches to select between modes. While I'm not the programming team, I think/hope it will include:
do nothing
drive forward
grab a tote or container and drive it to the auto zone
grab the three yellow totes for a tote stack after our partners move two recycling containers out of the way (maybe, this is kind of a stretch goal).

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We do plan to have multiple autonomous routines, so we can adapt to our alliance.

• The simplest is basically the same as the "mobility bonus" from last year - just drive forward a fraction of a second.
• The main one is to build a 3-tote stack and carry it into the auto zone. We're already planning a largely automated "align/stack/lift" bottom-stacking routine for tele-op using a pair of Sharp optical range finders, a string potentiometer, the camera, and touch sensors on the lift; the algorithm should work equally well for grey and yellow totes. To score a tote stack, we just need to dust off our old reflective target code and use it to get close enough to each yellow tote to make the A/S/L work. We start behind the right tote (as viewed from our alliance wall), A/S/L, back up, drive to the next, A/S/L, back up, drive to the last, A/S/L. Then, to get everything into the auto zone, we spin 180 degrees (we have a gyro) and drive forward until our "curb feelers" find the back scoring platform. Then we back up a few feet, drop the load, and back away a bit more.
• More TBD. Our grabber should be good at getting a single RC, but not at moving all three, or at getting them from behind the landfill, so we just add some minor variations, such as a tote stacker that works on the alliance wall side rather than the step side, and a driver that also takes advantage of the curb feelers.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We have 2 modes this year.

1) drive forward (push a bin with us?)
2) grab bin 1, grab 3 yellow totes and stack, set bin 1 down (not tall enough to put on top of the stack)

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We plan on doing a 3 tote stack and 3 container set then pull all 4 containers off of the step and line up at the HP station for our full field stacking mechanism. And that's just the first 5 seconds of autonomous. :rolleyes:

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

And then, the robot builds ten stacks of grey totes and, during the last seven seconds, it deploys a wall to block incoming litters...

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Sounds like you've had a rough day at work recently.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We took a really bold strategic decision to spend our autonomous period making contributions to our alliance's efforts to get high scores.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Wow how did you know? :ahh:

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

In Auto we'll start by boiling tea and warming up crumpets using our always-on compressor. There is nothing that says 'gracious professionalism' like making brunch for your opponents.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Our plan is to start our 3d printer right at the beginning of autonomous so that the robot finishes printing with enough time to stack all the yellow totes.

Yes, we are 3d printing all of the ICs as well :)

We use our flux capacitor in a non-traditional manner to speed up the chemical and physical reactions occurring in our robot and 3d printer allowing us to print a robot complete with electronics in under 5 seconds leaving us 10 seconds to stack the yellow totes. We decided it would be too ambitious and unrealistic to stack the gray ones as well

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Robot uses 16 MiniCIM based quadcopter to float above auto zone and uses portal gun to stack all 3 yellow totes and get 3 cans into auto zone from step.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

In all seriousness, I've noticed a lot of teams are planning on doing a 3 tote autonomous and I will be interested to see at competitions how many can actually pull it off. Scouting, as always, will be extremely important.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

if you are completely able to take ALL of the totes have everyone take their robots to the auto zone completely out of the way. score the points... good strategy?:confused:

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Do u got it working cause i want to see a video of that. Cause i will be impressed by it.:yikes:

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

A 3-tote autonomous is relatively easy if 2 bots pull 2 RC's out of your way.

Then again, if both RC's wind up being tipped over thus preventing the alliance from using them, the autonomous was completely worthless.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Precisely. Comparing the maximum points in autonomous to the points available in tele-op using the same pieces (40 co-op, RC stack bonuses x3) I'd almost rather have no autonomous points scored from moving RC or stacking totes than making the game pieces that are worth the most points harder to score because they were accidentally knocked over.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Guess teams should have a way to deal with tipped RCs if something another alliance member does could affect your entire teleop routine (where a large potential of points lie)...

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

While that may be true, good luck getting much use out of that autonomous mode in competition. Planning on modes that require your partners to execute specific actions that may or may not be trivial, especially two partners, I expect would rarely ever actually result in a successful Auton mode. And if you can't demonstrate something well in the quals, well, then teams wont exactly be very willing to pick you for it.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Well, at least that makes "Do nothing" look like an improvement!

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Who says tipped over RCs will be worthless?

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

:confused: sounds like a mechanical shortcoming, to me.

Also:
1.drive forward
2.center cans
3.3 tote

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Of course, if you design a robot that can deal with tipped containers, this becomes a non-issue.... The way we saw it, dealing with tipped RC's was a necessary part of any robot that planned to be good at stacking them.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We have our robot following the yellow totes. It is a ton of fun to watch one of the mentors take off with a tote and see how fast the bot catches up. :D

We have a few. Depends on what our alliance partners can or can't do. But our main one consists of moving the rc and tote to auto zone.

We can up right fallen rc's but it is quicker to just pick them up on their side.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

I love the idea, but 3d printing an actuator that meets FRC standards (that is, a list) sounds pretty steep. To my ears, "How do you 3-d print a COTS part?" sounds a lot like "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

The first thing you print is a big sign saying "all these parts are available for purchase in the lobby"?

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

I have been seeing many matches that robots do nothing in auto. We are working on a few options and one we are discussing trying out it using our "arms" to pull 2 grey totes out of the landfill and pull them back onto the scoring platform with our robot backing into the auto zone.

I know this wont get us any points in auto but could set up for fast stacking in telop. Has anyone tried to do this? Is it legal. I search the Q+A and manual and cant find anything saying it isn't.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

It's totally legal to start stacking grey totes during autonomous, and I'm honestly surprised no one has done it yet

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Me to, that's why I wanted to make sure before we went ahead and added it to our auto possibilities. See you guys in a few weeks and best of luck at TVR

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

At palmetto regional I noticed a few teams tell us that they simply don't do autonomous, because they wanted to be aligned with the human player station. Personally, I think all teams should at least move forward in auto.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

We are planning to start each match in front of the HP station, and not move into the auto zone. If both of our partners have proven that they can get in the auto zone >90% of the time, we'll consider using our drive forward auto, otherwise it's a waste of time.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

I wouldn't have set the bar that high, but for four points, agreed that if any alliance partners are struggling with this, it's not worth taking the time to drive back to where you want to begin teleop. Unless you or an alliance partner brought game pieces, the auto zone is definitely not it.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

The reason I set the bar this high is because the stars have to align perfectly for us to get any points. If both my partners have 90% drive forward auto modes, and we have a 90% drive forward auto mode. Our expected auto score will be 4*(.9)^3 ~= 3 points, and that's assuming our auto modes do not interfere with each other in any way.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Oh, I thought the 90% was after you had multiplied the numbers together. I was also thinking of a combined ~75%.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Of course the robot is up to it ;->, but how do you get totes through the chute door in autonomous when the drive team must remain behind the starting line? Do you have an HP with telekinesis? No, even that would violate G21:
That leaves the landfill. Eight seconds should be enough time to move all of the totes out of the landfill and off the step, leaving two seconds to deploy the wall that you no longer need to cross except for the coop points. Those don't count in playoffs anyway.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

These are some of our plans:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis..._ecAnWLm2Vm5md

This was added for Saturday at the Waterford District (blue robot bottom left):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai4AiWz7680

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

In scouting teams, we note whether the bot moves to the autozone, and whether it can bring an RC with it. A Bot/RC set is worth 12 points.

If I had a choice between Bot A and Bot B during picking, and they were identical, except for Autonomous, I'd pick the bot that can help the alliance get the additional 12 points. In week 1, that would have made the difference in helping our alliance advance to the 2nd round of eliminations. We still would have failed miserably against the top 2 alliances.

Re: What's your plan for Autonomous?
 

With the matches that I've watched, scoring in auto is incredibly difficult, so we're not even going to try. What we're likely to end up doing is just driving forward in hopes of a robot set, the simplest thing to do (however far from guaranteed to get 3 robots to do it.....or they'll overshoot as I'm concerned we might at first)