Autonomous Impressions
 

What did everyone think of autonomous this year? I must say I was very impressed at both UTC and SBPLI regionals, it seemed like a lot more teams had a functioning autonomous, and it was nice to see matches where all six robots did something in autonomous to score, get ready to score, or block another team. I also think the camera was a big success this year, thanks to the hard work of Kevin Watson and others. I can't wait to see the autonomous modes in Atlanta.

What does everyone else think?

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I like autonomous this year. I did see the fact, as you mentioned, that more teams had autonomous, and I see that as a great improvement.

I also liked the fact that autonomous gave a greater advantage than it has in years past, and the fact that you can use the programming much more effectively throughout the game, but I would love to see a more complex task with more TIME next year. The time allotted to autonomous mode was really what was lacking this year.

What did everyone else think?

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

i like it this year because it is like a chess match

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

Starting all teams in the middle was a great idea. Now autonomous has a well defined offense and defense component. Now that simple run straight forward routine you wrote (or helped someone write :) ) before the elims can take down an ultra camera guided, one-week-in testing 10-ball shooting routine. Now thats an upset :D

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

This year's autonomous is a large step up from any previous year's. This is the first year where more than a small handful of teams used non-dead reckoning methods for autonomous, had more robots moving in autonomous than any previous year, and had robots consistently scoring in autonomous. The only things I would want them to change in the focus for next year's autonomous would be to increase the time back to 15 seconds (now that teams have proven they will use the time) and to allow for multiple methods of tracking to targets (similar to how they had both lines to follow and IR beacons to recieve in 2004). They could even have 2 different objectives that would require different tracking methods to get there.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I must say that this year autonomous has been a great success, mainly because of its increased importance. for most matches where you are not playing a team who can put up 40+ points, winning autonomous is huge, and can often account for almost half of a alliances points. Scouting for autonomous modes is huge, and has won or lost many matches. In our case we had to do a large amount of scouting before every match to know if a team was going to stop our shooting, or are we up against an effective autonomous shooter who we will need to stop.

By the elimination rounds it really did turn into a chess match where changing your starting time by .5 of a sec could totally throw off a defensive robot, I saw 703 do this effectively a few times. As Karthik properly termed, this is the year of "Autonomous Chess."

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I think of this year's autonomous mode as more like a game of rock-paper-scissors.


This year is the best game as far as autonomous mode is conserned. I just wish we had 15 seconds instead of 10.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

Well, that's not necessarily true.....during the finals matches in NYC, 421 or 759 set an intercept course at us (375). They hit us, turned us completely around 270 degrees. The robot caught on that we were facing the wrong way (go gyro!!), turned back towards the correct goal, aligned itself, and had enough time to sink 4 shots into the goal. I was so happy that my auton code worked that well!!

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I think the camera is coming back, without question. (based on the many teams that had great success with it).

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

Illuminated targets were key.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I wonder how much the extreme lighting in Atlanta will affect the camera. With the illuminated target, and the standard color range of tracking for the camera, do you think many teams will have problems getting correct target acquisition?

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I used the standard colors that Kevin Watson provided in his header file, and have not had any trouble at the NJ regional, I did not even change it a single bit during any of the matches. Was just a matter of getting the code we wanted to work the way we wanted it to work :P

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I'm surprised. At the NJ regional, the lighting issues weren't too bad. We did have a match in the finals where 486 locked on to one of the overhead lights and dumped their whole load to that exact point. And throughout the regional we had the problem of the camera locking on to the lights off to the side of the field. After listening to me debate the issue and having multiple team members talk to pit admin, they decided to turn off one row of lights behind the blue alliance station, which did help.

Just remember, the lighting will be much more extreme in Atlanta, and it might have more of an effect.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

As an electrical/software mentor I LOVE autonomous!!

The camera has been an interesting adventure. A lot of teams seem to have gotten the camera to work, but I think the number of teams with highly optimized search/lock is limited. I do like the fact that autonomous is a large advantage, it has encouraged more used of the light/camera and they've done a great job of improving the camera performance (but it is still challenging for teams that want continuous improvement/perfection).

I definitely wish autonomous mode was longer, but with the game this year it makes sense, the real challenge is the time limit (and handling defense), since the camera performance is better.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

Agreed. Most of my time was spent optimizing the search cycle and the control loop for alignment........including the color range, the feedback loop, and the servo control loop and search code.

The time limit really is the hardest challenge this year.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

We've done the same; most of our changes have been in the search routine. We were doing really well in autonomous until we had one unfortunate (and unlucky) match where we were spun around, so we added the PID control to prevent any more of that silliness.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

Autonomous this year, from what I have seen at Great Lakes and West Michigan, is broken, seriously. Vision was a component that was really meant to be in a game like last year's, where it took two colors to recognize and some darn good logic skills to get it right. This year, instead of look, find, approach, guess, check, and place a tetra, its more like aim, fire, and hope to goodness that the ball goes in the hole, not make one somewhere else. Quite frankly, any team could build a generic softball pitcher and win because they have the camera software all ready to go.

In other words, autonomous would be much better this year if there were two colors to aim for: red light on red alliance, blue on blue, or something of that sort.

However, I am NOT asking for pain like last year, where there was just camera and minimalist code. Somewhere between this year's and last year's available autonomous equipment in the KOP would be the sweet spot for next year's game.

Also, the dumping half of autonomous was an excellent back door for teams, like 322, who kept it simple. An easy and quick 10 points in what could take a shooter three times as much time to score just three balls. Sometimes I wish we would've done that, yet again, I'd probably hear it from the power cravers.

-Joe

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

This year's autonomous was the best yet. They gave us a difficult challenge and i think we rose to the occasion.

This year was the year of effective control loops and cunning programming. I can only hope that subsequent games will be as much fun.

This year we saw corner dumpers, center shooters, defensive maneuvers, and even purely anti-defensive maneuvers. As the team's programmer, i had fun with the combination of a well made two axis turret with a vision system.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

CMUcam works excellently. I agree, the extra 5 seconds would be nice... I could do a heck of a lot more in 5 seconds.... have the robot dance, serve drinks, the possibilities are endless... :yikes:

The more sensors and autonomous hardware/targets we get, the better.

The thing I'd like best is if the 2007 robot controller would have 2 TTL serial pins so we could use 2 CMUcams for steroscopic vision / location triangulation... the processor already runs at 40mips or so, so it shouldnt have a problem eating data from two cameras...

Would be great, the robot could know exactly where it is on the field at all times. Then, the targets themselves wouldnt actually need a marker of their own.... would only need a lit target on the four or even two corners of the field...ok now i'm getting too techincal, probably can tell I eat this stuff up. :ahh:

I would tell you all what new commands I'm adding to our autonomous scripting language...

(its name is RALFF: Robot Autonomous Language For FIRST, would be happy to answer most any questions you have about it)

...but I'll just let you guys see what it can do when you see us at Atlanta.

-Q

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

The camera is good, I wish the autonomous period was longer.

Having a lit target helped a lot, but at 2 regionals, we found many lights that would fool it. Someone from the crew should check out the area with a camera and laptop before things get started, with the final lighting. At Las Vegas, there were advertising signs that were off on Thurs, but on Fri. & Sat. These were backlit with fluorescent tubes, and our test camera saw them as matching the target.

Maybe next year they will design the field with a backdrop behind the target.

Of course designing an autonomous system to ignore spurious inputs, is an important thing to learn about. An ideal robot would use other means to determine its position and heading, then only use the camera for fine tuning the final aim with a narrow field of view.

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As you said, I don't think anyone was looking to repeat last year, which is why I think things are less complex this year. Teams have options, you CAN score in auto without the camera but the ability to use the camera gives you more robustness and flexibility in autonomous.

I think part of what makes this year so nice is that the range of "skill" levels is well distributed. Last year maybe 5 teams used the camera and it only sometimes worked, which wasn't very exciting. This year some have chosen to go for the side goal, some are "point and shoot" some are "aim and shoot" and then there are teams which navigate/aim via the camera and only shoot if they have "lock". This gives spectators a nice bell-curve type of situation, some do it really well, some don't do it at all but most teams are participating in autonomous at some level.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

Good point.

I think its the matchups that could, and that's a 'could,' make autonomous broken. Example: two triplets at GLR. They both, aimed and shot very well versus an alliance that could aim and shoot very well, just a bit slow (*sigh*).

In short, the championship will probably be the determinant.

Re: Autonomous Impressions
 

I wish auto was longer
I wish i had more weight
I wish i had more build time
First wants you to say these things. If you didnt then they gave to you much. :yikes:

shaun