[video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

This is, in a way, our teaser and our reveal, at the same time.

This is the 2008 ThunderChicken autonomous mode sequence. I say auton because although it is during the "hybrid" mode, she is doing this 100% autonomously using only encoder feedback (for distances and angles) and an additional external processor to interpret the encoder data before sending it to the RC.

Keep in mind that what you see is actually the same movements repeated, and it ended in another almost straight direction, which would lead you to believe that it could (theoretically) do this multiple times..

No comment on any robot components other than hybrid :) enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcaYW-Ig39E

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Amazing-completely amazing

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

That was one FAST lap!!!

Can't wait to see you guys at GLR this year!

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

That is amazing but i would hate to see it if someone was in your way :ahh:

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Believe me, that wouldn't end pretty. When we were trying out our autonomous, we accidentally slammed into 1533's practice field several times at near top speed (sorry guys), and some of those crashes were pretty dang hard. The thunderchickens seem to be going faster than us... I would really feel sorry for the robot on the receiving end of a "body check" from 217's autonomous. Besides that, its a very nice autonomous mode, by my count, a solid 16points worth and there isn't any chance of IR interference ruining it.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Nice! Very quick system!

I notice your ball seems a little... flat?

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

:ahh: Holy cow! That is one fast bot!!

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Nice shirt... nicer sheet metal. :)

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Hey, it's cold in Michigan. The balls deflate.


Meaning you get to stand behind the glass shield and cheer, because the robot drives itself?

Great looking autonomous. We'll try to stay out of your way in Detroit, especially if you're on our alliance.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

That is some sheer speed!

works kinda like our autonomous mode, except we use a sonar sensor and a gyro in conjunction...
i like the encoder approach though... i assume your coprocessor is doing some fairly complex vector operations to get an angle out of the encoders?

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

That is one impressive autonomous showing, especially the speed.
However, like in real life, a ferrari wouldn't look good fast and hitting a wall or another car. But also, like in real life, a good driver behind the wheel makes this robot a force at competition. Maybe it has some sensors that tells it to move and avoid other robots while moving fast. :)

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

How fast is that? We haven't tested ours on a course but it goes approx 15 ft/s. Just want to compare.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Slick.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

That is a thing of beauty - besides the awesome speed, your rotation appears very smooth.

Memo to self: bring big hammers and johnson bars to straighten out the field.
Memo to drive teams: you may want to put extra velcro under your controls and bring ear plugs. This could get very loud.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

er... stupid school blocking youtube... I want to see!

sounds like it's another great bot.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Yeah... I second that... our robot already got run in to by an autonomous mode and we were just waiting for a practice round to start!

I'm glad we aren't the only ones doing high speed fully autonomous laps.

*makes note to finish up adaptive cruise feature* ;)

-q

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

verrrry impressive.... what speed is the bot running at ?

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

I'm not on the programming team (I just wrote here what they told me to put), but I understand it is doing some serious error processing calculations to keep it straight (beyond that I couldn't tell ya).

To all asking about the speed, I'm not sure off the top of my head. I know it was calculated at 17fps (in design), I'll see if we can get a more accurate measurement today.

If you look closely, you can see chunks of 06 poof ball being used as pseudobumpers on the corners :]

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

She made weight?

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

120.0 out the door, driving and fully functional =)

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Engineered that way, or cheesehole'd that way? :D

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

We prefer to call it Jenny Craiged...

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

That it is.

You looked like you might have been able to do this so I'll ask: Have you guys considered not finishing the lap and trying to dislodge a ball from the overpass? It seems like you have a mechanism for doing so.

Other than that I have nothing more to say except that that was an amazing video.

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

Here is a link to one of three pictures that may answer some questions:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=64709

Re: [video] ThunderChickens 217 Auton REVEALED
 

We use the co-processor as an interrupt driven encoder tick counter. It also performs all of the floating point math for calculating arc-length and theta. Arc length is simply the sum of the ticks of each encoder divided by 2. We then calculate the difference in arclenghth of each encoder. Since we know the distance between the two encoders (robot diameter) we can calculate theta. Using an external processor guarantees that no encoder ticks will be missed due to program flow latency or high priority interrupts like the ones used on the RC. We are using 128 bit quadrature encoders that are measured on both the rising and falling edge of each pulse. This gives an effective resolution of 256 ppr.