Re: Has anyone else had trouble staying within the 10 second limit in autonomous?
 

To help with the whole searching problem, we're going to try to initialize the camera so it will automatically turn to face about where the target is, then search from there. That saves a second or two of sweeping around looking for the light.

The ability to start facing any direction is what really helps this year. Since we shoot out of the side of our robot, we are going to start with our side facing the front of the field, and simply drive backwards (which will be left because of the robot orientation) a bit while everything locks onto target and the wheel gets up to speed, then fire as fast as possible.

We'll see how well auto firing works. I'd be worried about defensive bots purposely ramming you, except that you must specify which zone to start in BEFORE the match, which means they can't move their robot to try to hit yours. They can use a switch to pick a different mode and turn to come after you though.

And a last note, why do you need to move to shoot? The center of the three starting positions are 27, 30, and 34 feet from the goal.

Re: Has anyone else had trouble staying within the 10 second limit in autonomous?
 

plan yes, but we will see how that works out

Re: Has anyone else had trouble staying within the 10 second limit in autonomous?
 

I feel that that is too far away. It is possible that we will shoot from the starting position, but we haven't tested our new robot yet (I am working and testing on last year's robot, which has the same chassis design) so I am not sure how good our cannon will be. It's a good idea, but I think a: it may be too far; and b: the robot next to you might get in the way. I will definitely consider that plan.

-Thank you all for the suggestions! Keep them coming.
-David Mazza
-Longwood Team 564 programmer
- 564.first@gmail.com
- http://www.longwoodrobotics.org
- http://longwoodrobotic.6.forumer.com/

Re: Has anyone else had trouble staying within the 10 second limit in autonomous?
 

I would be interested to see teams that have had a chance to test this, but it seems to me that it would be really difficult to make it from anything but the front starting position at 27 feet from the goal. If you go with the 12m/s in FIRST's rule, and their discussion on being able to shoot 32 feet at the fastest speed, you really shouldnt be able to hit the goal at 30 feet away. But again, we keep getting conflicting answers with our testing and physics, so I would reserve judgement until I see a test that verifies a ball shooting at 12m/s makes it a certain distance.