We did gloves FIRST?
 

Hello, I am Rufus Cochran (rufu5), the electronics team leader for Team Roboto 447. Last season my mentor and I conceived, designed, and built our gloves or "virtural joystics" and won- 2003-MidwestRegional-Xerox Creativity Award, 2003-St.Louis Regional-Leadership in Controls Award, 2003-IRI-Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology Award. This system completely replaced joysticks for our driver controls. This year, I designed and built optical joysticks which use a glove that has a high intensity LED on it to control our arm (full precision control that acts like a sensitive joystick) :D
During the Great Lakes Regional, our team passed out stickers which said "We did gloves FIRST" (which I designed and used as a nice little pun). Two of my fellow students later reported that they were rudely told by two other teams that we were lying and that their teams had done gloves first :confused:
I am not doubting anyone, I would just like to know what they are talking about :yikes: I am only a Sophmore in High School but I have been with my team for 4 years and the only thing close that I have seen was a plastic "hand" that was geared up from a backpack a couple of years ago. I was under the assumption from the judges at Chicago and St.Louis last year that they had not seen anything like this before either. If we did not do "gloves" first, I am truly sorry for unintentionally misrepresenting this. Based on my time with FIRST, and the reaction I got from everyone I showed our "virtural joysticks" to, we thought we were the first team to completely move away from joysticks in driving our robots main drive system and pioneer such a control system. I feel certain that no one has ever attempted anything like our optical joysticks this year (well lol, as of now ;) ).
I would like to know if my light-hearted stickers offended anyone. We will stop giving them out if others have done such a control system before. Again, I am truly sorry about any mix up. I didn't mean to anger anyone with the stickers. We just thought it was something truly original to our team (like wildstang and crabdrive or kokomo and their shifting mechanism from a few years back). I just thought our team could be known for our innovative control systems :(
Please reply with as much detail as possible so I can know all the facts clearly. I don't want to look stupid spreading false information. I am seriously sorry if I unknowingly made a false statement and feel very bad about even the thought of making such a false statement.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

As far as innovations in OI controls, I would guess that you are the first to drive your robot without a joystick of some type (although some teams have used racing wheels in the past). However, you aren't the first to use a glove of any type (but you already know that).

Some notable FIRSTs in OI controls that I know of:

FIRST minature replica arm for control: team 308 in 2000
FIRST glove: 234 in 2001
DDR pads: 2003, sorry don't know the team

Personally, I think your stickers sound cute. If someone were to complain again, I would have your teammates explain why your glove systems are different, and also explain the pun to the humor impaired.

One final note on the judges. They often aren't involved in FIRST for any more time then just the regional they are judging at. Thus they have a very limited realm of which they are aware of. That's one reason why you occasionally see teams get awards for something that's been done many times before, etc.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

does anyone have pictures of any of these?

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

ddr pads for contorlers!?!? I NEED TO SEE THIS!!! if anyone has pictures of any and all of the discussed controlers (including 447's) that would be great to see =D

(btw yes 121 used a driving whell in the past and im sure others have too)

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

We used a steering wheel and throttle stick in 2001.

At least I think it was 2001...

Wetzel

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

The DDR pad was at the cleveland regional in 2003. Sorry, don't have any pictures, and AFAIK, there aren't any on chiefdelphi.

Jim Gold tells me that someone had a playstation controller in 2002.

Jeff, I don't consider using an off the shelf wheel to be an innovation, although it is really neat.

If you search the threads here on chiefdelphi and the image galleries, you should be able to find pictures of 308's miniature arm and 234's glove at a minimum.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Team 115 built a miniature replica arm for their control system back in 1999 (they may also have built one in 1998, but I don't remember for sure - Steve Rock will know).

There was a team that built a set of exoskeleton-based glvoes for their entire control interface (including driving) in 1998. I don't remember the team number off the top of my head, but I will look it up and see if I can find the old photos.

-dave

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

I have never heard of these, do you have a pic? Also as soon as I get a pic of our gloves from our team leader I will post it (and one of our optical joysticks, which are way out there lol).

One of the students said that a parent from the TechnoKats said they did a glove control in 99, does anyone know about those or have a pic?

Thanks for the replys!

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

The above is me explaining the gloves team 470 created for the 2003 competition. These won Leadership in Control at GLR that year. However, 470 originally developed a glove system which was unveiled at the 2002 West Michigan competition. In 2003, the students of the electronics team redesigned the gloves for added comfort and more of a One-Size-Fits-Most approach.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

What did this "glove system" include? I saw one team at nationals last year who had gloves but all they included were simple push buttons in gloves (that is seriously not meant to be mean im just trying to explain what they were to the best of my memory).

If you quote a control system please try to describe them clearly (not just "a team a few years ago did gloves that did stuff"). Thanks! :] (i dont mean to sound rude I just want to know what people are talking about, sorry)

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

470's gloves last year were to control our wings.

They were actuated pneumatically.

As to the gloves themselves, there were reed switches in each of the 8 fingers, and a magnet in each thumb. When the thumb was near enough (pinch-motion) to a specific finger, the switch would engage. Inside the programming, the switches were basically like normal on off switches.
Left-Index: Left Wing down
Left-Mid: Left Wing up
Right Index.. yeah

There was the option for expandiability, but it wasn't needed. Could they drive the robot and operate the wings? Yes, but we preferred a joystick to drive and glove for pneumatics.

If you want more information, I will give you the contact of the student designer.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Thanks!
Also, you said you did a glove system not last year but the year before, what did they do? Just wondering.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

For the first year, the gloves also controlled pnuematics on the robot. Our 2002 robot began in a vertical position (the wheels weren't touching the ground). So the gloves controlled the knock-over and shock mechsnisms, as well as the grip and release for our goal-grabber.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Awsome, Thanks. So im right in understanding that your gloves did not drive your robot. (Now I see that my stickers were not accurate, I should have done more research, our gloves (lol as I know so far) were the first to be used to drive a robot, but not the first glove based control system in a generic sense).

Thanks for your feed back, I would still like to hear about other teams who have used glove systems previous to the 2003 season :D

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

This might be slightly off topic, but how do you use the gloves at the start of the match?

That is, it is my understanding that we can not be touching the control system during autonomous mode.....does that mean that you have the gloves off that that point and then run up and put them on, or are they on, with a simple connector interface that gets plugged in when driver mode begins?

I'm just curious how you handled this sort of stuff.

Thanks,
-Quentin

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Our students built a DDR pad to control our stacking mechanism last year (2003). I was very proud of them since it was completely designed, built, and debugged by them. It helped us win a judges award last year at the GLR.

Here is a picture of our "Dancer" getting ready for a match:

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

GLOVE?

GLOVE???

all you need is LOVE (-John in Yellow Submarine movie)

(I hope our driver doesnt see that DDR pad control -he's been wanting to do that for the last two years now

just because it would be so cool! :^)

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

the first FIRST glove was actually way back in either 97 or 98 by none other than 121. Ill get more info but as far as i know an old skool Nintendo Power Glove was used to controll a feature on our robot.

MORE INFO TO COME!

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

By the way, Our team was the FIRST to use the DDR pad. we built it ourselves out of 2x4's and lexan(condutive materials too). It contolled the wings for STACK ATTACK and won us a judges award, along with robotics summer camp and starting a Lego league team. It was a lot of fun to build and use

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

rich look up don already said that

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Our driver started with the gloves on, and I (the operator) held the plug-in and on the OI we built a kind of guider. When auto-mode was over I quiclky pluged them in and he could drive.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

But you guys didnt make those? You just used the power gloves nintendo had already created. Sorry to sound rude, im just trying to get my facts straight.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

actually i got my info. the nintendo power glove was not a kit part and could not be used. Instead a glove with limit switches and potentiometers was used to model after the powerglove. the year was 1997 and Aquatread(the flipper) was in full force.... hehehe

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

For 470's gloves last year, if you look on the picture of me explaining the gloves, hanging at my midsection is a black box with a serial connector on the end. Attached to our OI was the other end. When auto mode was finished, I stepped up to the control station, plugged in, and rocked out.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Nice, do you guys have a pic?

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

::Shudders thinking of the flipper:: Can we not talk about that blasted flipper, it still gives me nightmares! ;)

Anyway, Rick would be correct. The 121 glove was the first glove ever created to control robot components. After seeing that glove, my team actually tried to model a different glove in 1998 in which we used limit switches and potentiometers to create a replica of the Sony Playstation Glove Control. It worked well, but we just didn't use it.

I can't believe that discussing the origins of technological advances in FIRST has actually come to an argument. Does it really matter who has the right to say they were the first to make a glove or a dance pad or a bot that can fly! Take a step back and say, wow there are gloves out there, look how far FIRST has come instead of fighting with eachother. Look at other teams not in this discussion. Does Beatty walk around with pins saying that they are statistically the best team ever to compete in competition (I'm not saying this is or is not true, just a simple example)? They are one of the more respectable teams out there, but they don't brag about their accomplishments. There are many teams out there like this who just take the successes with the failures, and don't fight with eachother. I am sorry if I have offended anyone, but this conversation is going in the wrong direction. Thank you for reading my 2 cents.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

This is the best picture that I can find.

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

We had a whole arm mechanism in a backpackthat the driver wore. As she moved her elbow the robot moved its elbow. At the end I beleive there was a handle which controlled how open and closed the gripper was. I don't think there was a glove on it, but that was the year before I started, so I could be wrong.

http://www.cyberblue234.com/images/p...s/DSCF0206.gif

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

Here are some more pictures to what Brant showed. That year we won an award at every competition we competed in for its innovation :]

http://www.cyberblue234.com/cb2003/images/RobotArm/

Re: We did gloves FIRST?
 

I reember you guys, ia m pretty shure youc ame to the Florida regional that year. That was my rookie year and i was soo amazed to see that