Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

we dri 2 the other side of the field and cover goals to keep other teams from scoring

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

903 had a cool one at Detroit, they drove in a semicircle around the back side of the rack once or twice to stop other teams.

Ours for a while was just drive backwards really slowly. It was a nice setup to get the first HP ringer, but we also tried to use it once to knock into the rack (to stop the other team from scoring their keeper).

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

We have 2 overall autonomous modes that don't score as well as 2 that do.
1) Drive to the other side of the rack and drive back and forth to prevent any opposing keepers
2) Sit and do nothing

We have several variations for our autonomous modes thanks to our autonomous switch.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

Yeah... we coded one, but the mentors told us not to use it, simply because they didn't trust it (they thought us having to re-tune our PID code after they changed the friction in the arm was bad coding on our part... also some other things were buggy because we didn't get all the wires hooked up correctly).

And then after 45 at BMR smashed into the rack and tipped over (a spectacular way to go I might add), they decided that they didn't want us to break it.

All our robot does is moves its arm down and closes it.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

We had a programmer spend a lot of time making some autonomous modes but we never got time to test any. we ended up having our robot move the arm into position and open the claw. this let our human player place a tube into the claw right when the match started.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

Here was a pretty cool match for us. So far, I haven't seen better teamwork... but the video doesn't show it all. Even though our robot fails to move, our alliance members move up beside us and allow us to get up. Right before SkunkWorks (the other robot that was lifted) got onto the lift, they gave our robot a bump up. Sadly... it doesn't show that in the video.

So far, it's the only match for the Pacific NorthWest Regional I could find on youtube but it starts with a pretty cool autonomous period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9rLeu0NYyU

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

537 always extends the mast, rotates 90 degrees, and brings our boom horizontal at the beginning of matches in order to be in a better position to pick up tubes from the rack. This was cool, but got cooler when we picked 494 and 70 to be on our alliance. Anyone who knows the martians know that they build two identical robots, which, for some odd and mysterious reason employed the same sort of concepts as our arm did. Essentially it looked like there was 3 of the same robot our there. Anyway, in auto the martians would unfold the arm and turn towards the chutes to pick up tubes. So, every auto mode in eliminations (we made it to semis then lost :( ) All 3 arms would deploy in perfect synchronization. There was a 537 sandwhich between 2 martians. :D . So in the first 10 seconds of the match we usually had 3 tubes up and we were coming back for more, we lost becuz we ran out of tubes and we couldnt get over to the other side to get more.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

I had fully intended to score in auton, and I still think I could, but my efforts on auton came to a screeching halt when I realized that arm control was much more complicated than I thought it was going to be. Now that I've got it under control, I am thinking about auton again.

I had it unfolding into pickup position, but my paranoid peers/mentors were convinced that it was not taking input from a limit switch...even though it worked great. That's what I'm going to test this week during a build window.

I just might have scoring in auton working; I don't forsee anything that would eat up all my build windows between now and Atlanta.

I love having a practice bot...

JBot

EDIT: Oh, and expect some good defensive autons from us...I have the framework written already; I just hadn't had enough time to test until now...

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

Our robot was spinning around in circles for its auto mode at SVR. When we realized that this only increases tread wear we decided to try and stop it. For some reason our programmers instead made the robot go forward two feet, then back up into a wall. It continued to scuff up tread, eat up current, and strain our gearboxes until our last seeding match when we finally killed the auto mode. Hopefully we'll have some sort of defensive auto at Davis.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

(ROFLMAO...) Don't talk about your programmers' work that way...I'm sure there was a completely and irrefutably logical reason the robot did what it did...:D

Like, for instance, it might be communicating with aliens. Or practicing a mating ritual with the other robots. Or it might just be there to keep your blood pressure up...but there's a reason it's messing up.

Let your programmers figure it out and be patient. They will discover their stupid mistake and they will fix it.

/gets off virtual soapbox

Common drivers...can't figure out why the robot loves kissing the wall...jeez!;)

But seriously, I still find myself staring at the robot, even when I know that I haven't changed the code one bit since the last match where it looked pretty for the first 15 seconds. These control systems...I swear they're haunted. Maybe IFI's manufacturing facility is right above an ancient burial ground or something...:D

JBot

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

We have one autonomous mode with 16 different submodes and settings...
4 switches govern whether or not to defend, which way to defend, middle or low spider, and a secret mode which we have yet to use.

what is the secret mode? i guess we will find out in atlanta!

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

We don't purposely not score... we had intended on scoring keepers. However, problems with no testing time led this to not happen at our regional, so we instead decided to just deploy our arm into a ground pickup position so as to do something useful in autonomous.

Working during fix it windows we've gotten our encoder drive and gyro turning working, and I believe we've figured out why our camera driving wasn't working (won't get to test until this week), so in theory things are fixed. If not we wrote our autonomous to use table driven commands, meaning we could easily navigate anywhere on the field for a starting position by simply entering "turn 90 degrees, drive 10 feet, turn 30 degrees", etc.

I'm still shooting for the "score a keeper, grab a ringer, score it too" in 15 seconds, but I'm willing to bet something will have a problem that will prevent us from getting it fully working.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

We have at least two autons that I can think of:

1. Scoring auton - Pick up the keeper, acquire the light, run to it , position the keeper, slam it eloquently on the top row...

2. Non scoring auton - Pick up the keeper, acquire the light, run to it , position the keeper, hit the $@#$@#$@#$@# light...

Oh yeah, I guess there is third one that involves bouncing off big, imposing defensive ramp bots, like 48 Delphi Elite, during step 3, that one is a 50% shot...

But seriously, we initially tried to do a double auton hang with team Sparx, 1126, during the eliminations at Buckeye. We went for the top while they went for the middle. This did not end up well in the semis, as Sparx first got hung on the rack because we gave them a tap in auton and then their gripper chose to not release the keeper - bad situation in the eliminations. After that little episode, we chose to intentionally disable Sparx's auton in the finals to eliminate this potential problem. With hindsight, maybe we should have disabled ours instead, which would have eliminated our third auton mode listed above...

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

Are you allowed to do that? We were told that we couldn't do that at Florida regional.

Re: Do you purposely not score in auto mode?
 

We unfold our 10 foot tower in autonomous. Its quiet enjoyable watching a 4 foot shorty transform into a 10 foot tall behemoth :)

Actually, our robot is very perplexing to those that have never seen it in action. Either it is folded up, in which case it looks like we weren't in our right minds when designing it, since there is loose chain everywhere, and the grabber initially starts upside down. Or, when it is unfolded, everyone wonders how we plan on meeting the height requirements :p

We also have two cameras on the bot, but due to tracking issues, we haven't gotten those working with the robot yet. But hopefully with update #19, we can get something working for Davis.