Best Autonomous
 

Hey Every One,
Unfortunately This years Autonomous Wasn't important enough for most of the teams to spend time on it, But it was the Most fun challenge for me.
so If you wanted to give an award to the best autonomous robot, what team would you give it to?

Re: Best Autonomous
 

79, captain crunch had a great auto mode. They went middle under the light and hit it most of the times I saw it. Granted they were at every event I was at so I got to see them alot

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1902 and 375. i can't choose - both are very sweet.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Of the teams I actually saw in person: 1730 had the best autonomous mode.

How about 190 in 2004?

...wait...

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I'd have to say from watching the webcast and the clip here, 340. That was a nice auto correct.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1730 had one of the best autonomous modes I saw this year. Along the lines of them were 910 and 233. All three of them tracked the light via the camera and were very consistent in scoring.

330 also had a very good auto but I think they dead reckoned theirs.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1730 had a great auto mode; I didn't get to watch them at the Championships, but I know it was doing well at Boilermaker.

I would have to say that 910's autonomous was accurate and consistent. During practice they scored at least twice and during matches at least four times, if not, more. I loved watching theirs though, because their arm was made to flip over the robot, and that's how they scored in autonomous. It was amazing to watch.

1114 also had a very nice autonomous mode. It was realiable and scored at least five times during matches. (It might have been more, since I was in the pits during the rest of the elimination, quarter, and semi finals matches.)

Other notables from Curie are: 1510, 365, 2046, and 716.

1001 also scored a couple times in auto.

2054 and 558 scored once or twice during practice as well, but I don't believe they scored in autonomous during qualifying.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1114 and 1902's worked almost all the time. Watch the 1114+67 combo at GLR, it was cool.

2056 had a nice one that went across the field to score, but it never actually scored, so---

I dont know. There were alot of consistent autonomous scorers.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I say 39,correct me if I'm wrong but, I believe they used the camera so they scored almost every time

Re: Best Autonomous
 

One thing I noticed this year was that there wasn't a lot of autonomous, but once a team got it working they tended to keep it working for the rest of the season. Most of the teams I saw score in autonomous were pretty consistent, atleast from what I saw. I have to agree with the comments on 1114. They had a nice bot and autonomous was no exception.

I also liked 48's defense autonomous, along with a few other teams that had effective defensive autonomous modes. I'm surprised more teams didn't do something like them.

Kudos to them and all the other teams that managed to get an autonomous mode working.

Thanks for the comments on our autonomous. Our two coders were almost always working on it, whenever they had a chance. The way they worked you might think they themselves were programmed to simply write code and compile it. Unfortunately during the finals on Einstein, and to a lesser degree on the Curie elimination matches, the camera wasn't fully synced to the field and once it got close to the rack it got confused by the lights above it. Other then that it was a beautiful thing.

Autonomous mode in general is really something to watch, especially when you are on the field and can see for yourself that no one is touching the controls. That feeling is something that would probably be hard for a non-robotics person to understand.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1114. Watching 1114 was like watching magic. It worked every time I saw them.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

One of the most consistent robots I saw all year was 1124, who scored almost every time on the close side, and although I don't think they ran it on the field, were able to go accross the field while practicing.

I was also impressed by 195, who developed their auto mode after UTC, and before Nationals, although I don't know how it did.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Yep. Just point and shoot and hope you guess right on where the rack will be. (We often missed, though we were close most of the time.)

67, 1114, 910, 1902, 368, the list goes on. I think if it scored a keeper, it wins. (Then again, I'm more mechanical than programming.)

Re: Best Autonomous
 

233 anyone? They were the only team I saw score in auto on the top spider leg. They did it almost every time in the Archamedies eliminations, yet missed pretty much every time on Einstein. I think something was wrong with the lights on Einstein though, because 1902 missed pretty much every time as well, and if anyone should be hitting it in auto, its 1902. Did anyone else notice the auto misses on Einstein?

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1902

1114

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Coming into championships we (1902) had an 87% success rate. See this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=04WOql6JqQI

In my opinion auto mode got us to Einstein, but it did fail in Einstein. Our banebot motors on our arms were failing and throwing off much of what we did.

I can't judge others because I spend most of my time in the pits, but I did see 79 and their flip over was really cool.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

One of the best ones I saw personally: 33, the Killer Bees. ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! Worked almost every time, if not every time (I can't truthfully remember) I saw it. Went up, scored on the rack in less than 10 sec., and then went back to the driver's station and got ready to load.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I would like to complement The thunderhawks and team sparx because they almost had two keepers during their play-off matchs and it was timed just about timed perfect so that the thunder hawks would score then back away so that sparx could score on the same coloum


Sorry about any spelling mistakes

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1038 frequently scored on the top spider in autonomous.

67's auton was money in the Curie elimination rounds.

Also - I challenge more armless rampbots to try and score in auton during any offseason events. We attempted to do this on Thursday in Atlanta and actually were somewhat close if our aim was better, and I believe some other team actually tried it during the qualifying. You may find the tops of your ramps to be interesting places to hang a keeper. If anything, even if you don't score the keeper, it may help buffer you against getting the spider leg stuck inside your ramps if you wish to try a defense rack bump auto mode. Hey, it beats just sitting there.

Who will be the first armless bot to score in autonomous????

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I personally feel that 375 has the best autonomous mode. It worked some of the time in NJ (if I remember correctly) but on Newton I don't think I saw it miss once. I was shocked when they weren't chosen for an alliance.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

341 Miss Daisy and 173 were the only one to score with us all year, and it was fun to watch the way the did it.

233's I heard ran like butta at Champs and they scored once on Einstien which was impressive due to the Calibration issues/field being brand spanking new.

79's I heard got much better as well.

Others that I saw work/were fun to watch or root for. 386 ( with the easy button ) 39 ( worked pretty well in vegas ) of course the infamous 67 1114 seemingly perfectly coordinated routines.

Ohh and 1369's worked pretty well as I remember.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

386

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I can't believe I forgot 375! Excellent autonomous (& excellent scorer overall)

Re: Best Autonomous
 

It's "easy" to pick my favorite auto: 386.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1902. Not only were they were accurate, they were the quickest.
1114.
39.
386.
233.
375.
67.
79.
1038.
2056.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Epsilon Delta, 116, had a pretty good auto too. They obviously did their homework.

WC :cool:

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Of the ones I saw, it's 386 Team Voltage on Archimedes - if it didn't detect that it hung its keeper, it backed up and tried again, as many times as necessary until time expired. Plus they had modes that could go around to the opponent's side of the rack.

Honorable mention to 1369 Minotaur at Peachtree and their cousin 1902 Exploding Bacon on Archimedes for consistency.

And thanks to both 386 and 1369 for helping us try to get ours working, which we never quite did.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1902, I didnt see much of them at atl, but at the florida regional they scored very fast and very consistantly

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1902, 386 and 233 are the three that immediatly come to mind

Re: Best Autonomous
 

1902

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Thanks for the compliment! We won the Creativity Award in Orlando, the Controls award at Palmetto, and the Championship Controls award in Atlanta, so I think the judges agreed with you.

The EASY button on the front of TyRap VII made the retry possible. When it contacted the spider foot, the automatic scoring sequence was engaged and the robot KNEW it had made it. If it didn't hit within a reasonable time period or a maximum camera tilt, it would back away from the rack and try again.

On Archimedes we only missed 1 out of our 14 matches (92.85%), and that was the first one. We nailed the remainder of our qualifiers and EVERY SINGLE ONE of our eliminations (Quarter, Semi, and Finals) and ended up Finalists on Archimedes along with 85 and 107.

If you have a BitTorrent client (http://www.BitTornado.com or http://www.BitTorrent.com), feel free to come over to my tracker at http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net:30049 The videos you'll want are:

2007 UCF Jim 386 WMVs
2007 UCF SOAP 386 WMVs
2007 Palmetto 386 WMVs
2007 Atlanta WMVs

Those have all of our matches in small space and correspondingly low quality. if there's any that you want to see better, pull the .mpg version of that match.

For a great view of the retry, pull 2007 Palmetto Q29.mpg. For our reverse autonomous scoring attempt, check out 2007 UCF Jim 386 Q49. And for a spectacular crash as we attempted a retry for outside scoring, check out 2007 Palmetto Q40.mpg.

Enjoy! If all goes well I'll be compiling a video of all of our autonomous executions labeled with where and when, but I haven't gotten the proverbial round tuit just yet.

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Software and Coach

PS. Don't panic if you can't hear the Palmetto videos. Our VCR didn't pick up the audio. :(

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I watch some of your videos. It is impressive. Your success rate could be the highest or at least top five. Not sure who would be better.

Did you use the camera to get there?

Re: Best Autonomous
 

There's a story behind the retries... Ldeffenb up there didn't think it was going to happen, so a friend (lilbowser) and I went out to the Olive Garden, thought of a retry criteria, and brought it back to the meeting and implemented while our brain-fried software mentor took his dinner break... Oh yeah, this is 5:00PM, Monday night before ship.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Yes, there's no other way to do it that often from that many angles (Palmetto Q29) without the camera. As a matter of fact, we noticed that the rack got seriously twisted by the refs just before our matches. :)

When you see the robot waddle (software's term) or swagger (team lead's term), you know it's tracking the light.

If the light was too far to the side, the robot would actually drive away from the light keeping it at the edge of the viewfinder until it came into closer alignment with the spider leg at which point it would turn back to the center to score. (Homework for the reader: what light geometry did we use to determine the fact that we were "on the beam"?)

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Software and Coach

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Ok, Chris gave me the tuit of uniform radius, so the autonomous-only videos are now on my BitTorrent tracker at http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net:30049

You're looking for the torrents that start with "2007 386 Autonmomous". The UCF practice were first and are particularly awful. For the remainder of the UCF matches, we did better, but were still experimenting with non-center modes. At Palmetto, we did better but still messed around with the outside. Finally, in Atlanta on Archimedes, we got it all together and just stayed in our sweet spot.

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Software & Coach

PS. If you need a BitTorrent client, check out http://www.BitTornado.com or http://www.BitTorrent.com. For advanced users, use Azureus from http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I thought 330 had a wonderful autonomous, but 1730 was great. Both were equal.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I'm guessing you used blobsize and your distance from the light. At any given distance to the light, there is a nice relationship between viewing angle and blob size, accurate to perhaps +/- 5 degrees.

That is how we started doing it with the Fighting Pi robot. Later on (after we got all the calibration data) we switched to just going to the light regardless of angle for expediency's sake.

In fact, something else we did was to have the robot get a blob size at one location and a blob size at another. By comparing the two you could get your exact position (within a couple inches) anywhere on the field and score on any spider leg.

In this case we had major portions of it working but the setup and calibration was questionable at the regionals (prior to them finally realizing they had to give us time on the actual playing field) so we scrapped it for a simpler system.

Autonomous is fun :)

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Almost, we used the ratio of height to width of the light. If we didn't think we were square enough in front of the light at the start, we drove to the side until the light appeared to be wider than it was tall. At that point, we turned back to center and went in for the score!

We wanted to do that, but with our Easy button spider foot detector and our method of carrying the keeper, we needed to be nearly square when we arrived. Otherwise, the ringer would not get over the stinger and the effort would be wasted.

Autonomous is what software teams live for! Our 15 seconds in the spotlight that wouldn't be possible without a robot that is controllable, reproducible, and fully accessorized with intelligent sensors. Any robot that can run a good autonomous can probably play the following game pretty well too!

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Software & Coach

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I am putting together a video of all the various bots auto modes. See the thread below:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=57184

I already have collected myself 33,39, 79. 116, 340, 341, 386. 424. 1629, 1730, 1902.

Go to the thread and add your URL to your video to be added to the video we are making. Please read the rules.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

You really need to get a video of Bomb Squad (team 16), their Ultrasonic Sensors were the most impressive sensor mechanisms for autonomous at the Lone Star Regional.

-Danny

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I would like to include them. Soap is down and I am not sure where to find their videos I can down load. If you can help I would appreciate it.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

To answer this, we actually did go across the field to the other side of the rack a few times. We didn't try this until the Championship, though, and we only used it at the beginning, so you might not have seen it.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Team 16 or The Lone Star Regional on The Blue Alliance Match Archive System.

Cheers! :D

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Got it.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

I am putting together a video of every robot that did an auto mode. Can you send me an url of your favorite one of 1124, must be able to download it, youtube you can't download.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

Team 1629 (Gaco), score on the other side of the rack in auto-mode today at Parc, an off season event. Video should be posted after we get it ready.

Re: Best Autonomous
 

YAY FINALLY!!!
Our entire alliance was excited when this happened!

I think that out of the ones that I saw in person the best were 375, 1038, and 341.