but what an excellent engineering lesson that would be!

thats how it is in the real world - engineering is all about change

when things stop changing you dont need engineers anymore.

The ones that can deal with rapidly changing requirements, and learn new systems quickly, are the ones who achieve the most success.

I heard someone said on another forum that in an ad by innovation first that their controllers can be controlled witha play station controller but this is only a rumor.

<complaining>A new control system would be the best thing to ever happen. As for PSX controller ports. I highly doubt it. But at least bidirectional ports would be nice so that we ca nuse force feedback type stuff. I would like to see something like a BasicX or even a full blown embedded computer. The other thing that would be awesome would be some TTL outputs on the RC. What about a real disply like a VFD or an LCD. None of this LED segment display crap. </complaining>

I think we saw a bit of that this year, with the introduction of bins. A lot of teams had gotten really good at handling balls, but the bins were a complete unknown, and some of the rooky teams did as well, if not better than some of the teams that have dominated in the past. As for an underwater game, I'm not so sure that FIRST would really go for that... As much as they like to switch things around, that would be a little much. They tend to reuse as much as they can, but there would almost nothing that could be reused from this year's field....

S cubed

A JSTAMP would be an awful idea. A BasicX or OOPic on the other hand would be great.

Check out the topic:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=18581

I hope...
 

I hope we get new interface and controllers because this years were a little bit of a pain to do deal with. I mean in a programming way.

I heard its true...

a new robot controller would be really cool, giving variety to the electronics and programming group :)

If they want any kind of serious control system, they have to switch to a different controller. Frankly from a programming stand point, FIRST is not a control system competition in anyway. If they intend to keep autonomous mode, and if they want teams to develop better AI, they would HAVE to switch to a better controller. Something that uses a non-obselete language would be nice. PBasic is a mix of assembly and basic. To me it looks like they got the worst of both worlds. Only thing missing is line numbering...
But back to the point, it would be nice to have C, or Java even.

At the Annapolis Regional I briefly spoke with Dave Lavery. One topic that was discussed were thoughts on a new control system. He wants to know people's ideas about processors, languages, what features we would be looking for in a control system. So far this thread has echoed a lot of my thoughts. Keep it going.

As far as languages go it would be nice to either see C++ or Java

as far as features go it would be really nice to see some TTL I/O lines as well as an LCD or better yet VFD display for feedback and debugging.

Whatever processor they use, it better have alot more memory as well as be alot faster. (giving us some kind of motorola procesor and bundling a compiler such as the one made by metrowerks for use for motorola processors) how about a BasicX. The basic Stamp is just pathetic. And the current control system runs too slow to even read a whel encoder without the help of something like an external pic to count the pulses and relay the info the the control system. The lack of buffers on the current control system further exacerbates the problem. As i have said in other threads i am all for a new control sys.

Yeah, you always hear that robots can be programmed using C++ but you never see it. Could you imagine though, that just with an application all you would have to do to program the robot is punch in a bunch of values and push a bunch of buttons and it would automatically program for you? That'd be nice to have.

Why?
 

I personally see know reason for a faster processor. We have never had speed issues w/ processing at all.
Also, I see no reason to jump to a different language, as PBasic is good to work with, for newbies and experienced programmers...

while a faster processor with more functionality won't be shunned by me, it's not *needed*. it's nice and all, but it's like frosting on the cake. it's simply not crucial to robot function to have linux embedded in the robot. of course, just because it isn't needed doesn't mean i wouldn't mind seeing it... :p

take into account soe teams who have almost no programming skil.
I know my team is just starting to learn how to do the basic programming in PBASIC.

Having all that training on the Isaac 32 system and PBASIC worth nothing because we switch systms would not be cool for some teams.

Switching either the system (keeping PBASIC language) or just the language (keeping the 32 system) wouldnt be bad,

switch both and some teams could be in serious trouble (i know mine would)