Chief Delphi - 2007 West Michigan Regional

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Chief Delphi (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/index.php)

- Regional Competitions (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10)

- - 2007 West Michigan Regional (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56196)

fluffy

01-04-2007 15:27

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz (Post 608822)

Hey Dave how did you manage to clock your post at 1:11?

the other dave posted at 1:41 :)

congrats to all the teams for another tough regional, and I wouldn't be surprised if many teams from WMR are in the finals at the championships

Vogel648

01-04-2007 16:35

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck (Post 608789)

Thanks for the kind words. To answer your questions, when we began this season, we made a conscious decision that we weren't going to dedicate as much time to autonomous (the last 4 years have been grueling). With the new clarified software rules, and the minimal impact on the game, we focused on making a machine that was easily controlled that could play the game well. We did play with some sensors to see what could be done, but we didn't have too much success. We knew up front that this decision would turn a lot of heads, but it just wasn't worth it.

You had problems with the camera? I think we all did, at least at first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck (Post 608789)

2. At Midwest, we saw 71 perform a maneuver that hadn't crossed our minds. They faced the rack and drove in an arc around the rack while facing the center of the rack. This got the wheels spinning faster.

do you mind explaining to me how this manuever works, or is that too top secret until post-Atlanta?

Also, I would agree that last year when we went to West Michigan is was a great experience. At some point I could see our team going back there for the high quality of competition and fun.

fluffy

01-04-2007 17:05

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck (Post 608789)

You not only gained our competition in autonomous this weekend,. There were many teams that were impressive on the field. 33, 67, 397, 469, 1718 come to mind.

We had problems with autonomous the whole weekend, then after the finals were over, we had the bright idea to change out the camera with a new one, and voila, it worked almost flawlessly

tdlrali

01-04-2007 17:19

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Regarding Vogel648 and:

Quote:

They faced the rack and drove in an arc around the rack while facing the center of the rack. This got the wheels spinning faster.

We call it "circlestrafe", and as far as I know, it is only possible with Swerve/Crab drive. It is basically like driving a car in a circle (with the side always facing the center of the arc), except that the front or back of the robot faces the center of the arc. It is quite useful for scoring on the rack, as it is one continuous movement and not a series of driving and turning maneuvers

Don Wright

01-04-2007 17:38

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Thanks to everyone for a great regional. It was the most amazing regional I've ever been at.

Is anybody going to host an archive of some of the videos?

Dave Scheck

01-04-2007 17:57

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vogel648 (Post 608908)

You had problems with the camera? I think we all did, at least at first.

We actually never planned on using the lights. We thought that it wasn't really worth the effort to figure out how to track two lights with the CMU cam (I don't even think we unpacked the camera). We had camera experience in 2005 and 2006, so had it been a single light case, we may have tried it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vogel648 (Post 608908)

do you mind explaining to me how this manuever works, or is that too top secret until post-Atlanta?

tdlrali's post describes the maneuver well, however, 469 has the advantage of having independent steering on their wheels. We have front/back crab, so we turn the wheels 90 degrees and only drive the back wheels. By varying the speed that we drive, the radius of the arc changes.

Astronouth7303

01-04-2007 18:04

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

As I've said in other threads, we would have had an autonomous of some kind if not for a bug dealing with multiple bindings on a button. :(

All around, though, a very good regional. (And I have a new appreciation for the field designers!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck (Post 608789)

To all the teams that we faced during elims...thanks for the awesome competition. It was by far the most exciting tournament that I have experienced. Any of those alliance could have won at any time.

We try.

Dan Petrovic

01-04-2007 18:36

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdlrali (Post 608939)

and as far as I know, it is only possible with Swerve/Crab drive.

It's quite possible with a mecanum/omni drive, just more difficult.

Andrew Schreiber

01-04-2007 18:40

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

We call it "circlestrafe", and as far as I know, it is only possible with Swerve/Crab drive

One could possibly emulate it with a tank style drive if you had a turret. Just do the same trick wildstang does, drive one set of wheels faster than the other and you will go in an arc. The trick to using it with tank drives is that you have to turn your robot sideways and swing the turret perpindicular to the original front. Then you drive sideways keeping the turret pointed to the rack. Essentially you are treating the turret as the front of your robot and your chassis is doing the "crabbing". This requires the turret to have enough rotation to keep it facing the rack but if you only want to translate across 3 legs that means 105 degress of rotation either way. (90 to turn it at a right angle to your robot's "front" plus the 15 degrees apart for the legs) Mind you my math may be off but the point is, this circle strafe is NOT owned soley by crab drives. Anyone with tank drive and a turret can do it. I apologize if that is unclear. Short version, just drive in a huge arc around the rack and keep your turret pointed towards the center.

Oh and West Michigan was amazing, Ive never seen so many great teams at one regional. Congrats to 469 494 and 703. You guys were amazing.

tdlrali

01-04-2007 19:32

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

One could possibly emulate it with a tank style drive if you had a turret.

Ah yes, you are completely right, that would have the exact same effect

Quote:

It's quite possible with a mecanum/omni drive, just more difficult.

I have no idea, but I'll trust you on this one :P

BRosser314

01-04-2007 19:44

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

IM thinking with a mecanum drive you would have loads more of complex manuevers with the joysticks or controls

Vogel648

01-04-2007 20:01

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Scheck (Post 608966)

The chances of tracking two lights if you do it right was minimal, both from experience and from taking a close look at things. Our robot does not even handle the case in which it finds two lights, it's completely improbable really. To get two lights within the 25 degree range of the light you would have to be fairly far away and for some reason have you camera tracking in the middle of the two green lights. With a search function that starts at one end of the area the rack will be in this will rarely if ever be a problem.
Edit: yeah after thinking about it the circle thing makes sense, but isn't possible with our form of crabsteer, I guess it wouldn't be very efficient energy wise because the wheels aren't at the right angle. Of course feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Dave Flowerday

01-04-2007 22:15

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

The issue for us was not whether or not we could make use of the camera - we're one of a very few number of teams who used it with lots of success in both 2005 and 2006 (we had issues scoring the tetra in 2005 but it had nothing to do with the camera which worked perfectly nearly every time). The issue was simply whether or not it was worth the time to do it again this year, and I stand by our decision. Scoring a keeper in auto is nice but not worth the effort we've put into our autonomous software in prior years. We had developed our own custom camera software which worked extremely well, but the software rules now prohibit us from reusing that and we didn't feel like redeveloping it.

Hopefully FIRST decides after this year that the game is more fun when a lot of teams are doing autonomous. Even at MWR there still weren't many teams doing a lot and often it was pretty boring. Not allowing teams to build on software from prior seasons will continue to limit teams to primitive auto modes (in my opinion). We got lucky that we were able to put something really simple together with our robot this year but I don't think it's anywhere near as cool (or inspirational) as some of the things we've done in the past.

pcrobonick

10-04-2007 07:49

Re: 2007 West Michigan Regional

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wigginsgame (Post 607834)

Alright, so this doesn't have to do with the webcast or anything, and I suppose my opinion may be slightly biased, but does anyone else find it kind of unfair that after 1327 rammed us(67) (full speed) bending our end-effector, that they didn't receive a yellow card? I just want to see what other people's opinions are on the subject.

if anybody is going to complain about getting a yellow card, its us - team 2197

P.S. I dont think that ram was full speed

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