Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

How about this for a new FRC technology? Scanning LiDAR

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

Ability for the robots to access the live scoring data from the FMS.
Teams could build their own score overlays into their dashboards or future HUDs.

Robots could actually confirm that a scoring task was complete, very useful for auton.

Lots of other uses I can't think of right now.

Central Stat Database
Sports are better when people have better information. Most other sports (Basketball, baseball, etc) have people that are keeping stats of each player and relaying them to the announcers, and teams. We have dozens of people each match taken down information but we don't have good ways to collect, and verify accuracy. How much better would Einstein announcing be if they could pull up shooting percentages, and shot charts for robots?

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

I don't see there being good per robot stats until FIRST starts scoring by robot, which I totally understand why they do not.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

We already have systems that attempt to calculate robot stats (OPR, etc). Once wifi is allowed in the stands TBA or another system could be expanded to allow people to submit robot stats. Those stats could be rated or vetted based on how accurate previous submissions were etc. I'm not expecting their to be volunteers in charge of this, I'm talking about crowd sourcing it from the teams that are already collecting the data anyway.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

I've seen this in a few places already and want to correct... When on the field all robot communication is already over the 5GHz Wifi spectrum. There is an associated 2.4GHz network for the FTA, but that is not mission critical and is subject to the extreme congestion of the 2.4GHz spectrum at many venues.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

In the future, all robots will be programmed in Javascript.

I am kidding and I really just wanted to link to Gary Bernhardt's talk because I find him hysterical and this thread reminded me of it.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

That would be absolutely awesome. It was hard as the drive coach this year to keep looking back and forth between the field and the screen to see what was happening. Having the ability to display the current match statistics (not just score but tower strength, defense strength, and time remaining) would be a game changer.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

QFT!

A123 cells (LiFeP04) would provide a much more reliable and capable power source for FRC robots. They have significantly higher energy density and power density than current batteries, but are still affordable and safe to operate.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

LiFePO4s have one significant drawback, though.*

Whoever is in charge of shipping them has to have certifications of some type to ship 'em. And that means that if a team should have to ship their robot--you know, like maybe they make one of the Champs--they need to find someone to handle shipping their batteries. Or get certified, which I have no clue on how to do at this time.

If y'all are interested, I happen to know this because of shipping a robot running a pair of LiFePO4s as its primary power source. I wasn't directly involved, but I know that to get the robot--and its batteries--home, arrangements had to be made at that robot's competition for someone to assist.

I'd put those as 2020s technology, most likely. Love 'em, but I don't think they're quite practical enough to use for FRC just yet. I particularly like the fact that they'll run at pretty much the same voltage for a long time before suddenly dropping out--great for embarrassing any battery-changers that forgot that it's every 3 matches instead of every 5 matches.


*Ignoring the price, that is. They aren't all that cheap, yet.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

I agree. This would be a clear case of over-engineering. If we go to higher energy density, I'd much rather have a battery that came in at 25%-50% of the weight of current batteries but was fully capable of lasting a hard-fought match. The full-weight, long-lasting batteries would be great to have for demos and practice time, of course!

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

I'm new to LiFePO4, is this the type of battery people are thinking of?

http://www.batteryspace.com/lifepo4-prismatic-battery-12-8v-20ah-256wh-10c-rate-24-0---un38-3-passed-dgr.aspx

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

There is not that much science to shipping Lifep04 batteries, if you use fedex or ups you just need a sticker and normally a declaration on the packing slip. There is also a weight requirement and they may require you to ship separately. Nothing crazy, a bunch of hobby shops ship lithium polymer all over the world for drones, rc cars etc.. LiFeP04 is a factor of million safer, also according to our fedex rep lithium phosphate will soon follow under its own declaration and no longer require a sticker.

I also do a bunch of shipping of lithium phosphate batteries from Shenzhen to the US, which has also been NP.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

This is the cell I like the best. I have not found a good mass produced enclosure for them yet.

http://www.a123systems.com/lithium-i...rical-cell.htm

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

There are two main types(most commonly used) of LiFePO4 cells 18650’s and A123’s

Laptop Batteries, cordless tool batteries(lithium ones), Tesla car’s etc.
Use 18650 cells.18650 cells look like big AA batteries.

The safety of 18650 cells is well documented, like all high capacity batteries they have the potential to be very dangerous. Most battery packs which use them, such as in laptops or cordless tools, have a lot of protection/safety measures built in to prevent problems. If FRC was to move towards LiFePO4 batteries, for safety reasons I would say that the some elements of the electrical system would have to be redesigned, to limit the potential for injury/error.

I would definitely not suggest using the battery that you linked as it is made up of 4 large single 3.2v 20a/h cells rather than conventional small cells.That battery is only capable of providing 40 amps continuously, so I believe it wouldn’t be suitable for FRC purposes.

Re: Future FRC Technologies?
 

There isn't a lot stopping you from using LiFePO4 batteries on your robots for demos and practice time out of competition, it'd be good for demo's but there would probably be a performance difference between the SLA's and the higher capacity LiFePO4's, most likely related to voltage. If a LiFePO4 battery can supply 12.8V constantly, and the SLA quickly drops to 12V, then your motors are going to become 1.14 x more powerful when using LiFePO4 than with SLA.

12.8/12(increase in speed) x 12.8/12 ( increase in torque)=Increase in power.

If you are wanting to have a longer period of time between battery changes for a practice robot, you could put an extra SLA in parallel if you have the space( since this is a practice robot you could fabricate a different battery holder etc.)