[FTC]: Autonomous?
 

So as a Veteran Programmer for 3864, and our FRC Team 1102. I wondering for this years Game what do you plan to do for autonomous mode.

We have as of now 9-10 different programs, some shoot, some collect an entire tower then shoot, some collect both towers, and also if needed defense programs.

What does you team plan to do.

See you at Nationals,
John Fogarty GFORCE 3864

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Ours are about the same. We've found that- to have solid autonomouses (that can handle defenses)- quite a few sensors are needed, especially because a defensive autonomous can be as simple as "Drive forward for 6 seconds".

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

What I'm finding is that the infared sensor is extreamly inaccurate, I had trials with it and they performed ok, but not well enough. I like the color sensors though so it can see the goal. Though i like using timing because you will always have a certain level consistancy sensors don't give.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Yeah. A mix of dead reckoning and sensors is always nice. I haven't used the color sensor much myself; how accurate is it?

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

At the NorCal tournament our IR Sensor based routine was accurate enough to typically get 7-8 balls (the pre-loads) into the high goal during autonomous. We do currently use dead reckoning to follow the goal as it spins around though - we're looking at how to avoid that for World.

We brought three autonomous routines and used two of them... At world we're planning on bringing at least 8.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

All I can say is that autonomouses that do not work are the difference between a sloppy close defeat and a clean surefire win ;). Any defensive or offensive strategy can be overcome by simply applying the necessary pressure via a good autonomous strategy. The teleop after two opposing offensive autonomouses will be a match for the record books.

We will not make the same mistakes in Atlanta, will we Buddy?

There's a way to make the IR sensor VERY accurate. You simply have to apply what most teams did with the FRC camera in 2007 to get it working properly with the green light, and placement is KEY.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

The code I looked at for our teams 2007 camera is only slightly useful, I wrote a base code within several if, then statements just to see values come back on the screen. It can be good, if you have the time to write 100 lines or so of code.

We have strategies that my Drive team is formulating to help make autonomous better. We also added a new addition to keep balls from escaping when we open a ball chute, with a wide enough angle so none of the balls can pass without entering our hopper which takes up 75% of our robot = holding lots-o-balls.

The color sensor is really nice but it's range is limited. I have to dead tell it how to get to the goal, but once it's there it makes the minor adjustments to get in line to shoot.

Yeah Our Autonomous was a key factor on how we won one of our regionals, we had the high score of the day but ended up having a failure in the Finals match 2 but luckily we scored 5 in the high goal during autonomous so we won the match. I hate failures but we are training our Field team to be able to fix any problem in 3 minutes or less, we only really have one part of our robot that can fail and now that we changed it's design it's a really quick fix.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Maintenance was pretty much the only reason we did as well as we did in VA. Every match was sloppy, and we still don't understand why the balls kept falling 6-8" short of the outer goal on the field whereas in the practice field they were getting plenty of distance. Autonomous would have made the whole point moot like it did for them in DE, but code rework meant that we didn't have the same autonomous that they had in DE. Redundancy and simple maintenance were why we survived as well as we did in VA, but in the end it wasn't enough to seal the overall win.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Yeah matinence problems are a killer at the begining of the SC reigonal our shooter came loose from it's axle, and it didn't get to the max speed high enough to shoot in the goal, But in the end we figured it our before we played our first match.

I hate how you can line the robot up perfectly and it still for some retarded reason, one or two balls still won't fall in the Goal. ahaha

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Exploding Bacon has 22 autonomous modes each doing different routines and combinations of scoring, collecting balls and defense. And thats just scratching the surface of what we could have done! :O

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

After going in as captain of alliance #1 and seeing the robot fail because of a faulty NXT wire, in the first round of the semifinals, I can definitely say that maintenance, and good preparation for each round is a key factor.

As far as balls shooting different, we've definitely found that the gold balls shoot different than the others, and the regular balls shoot way different (shorter) than any that are not the official ones...

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Yeah you are right about the yellow ball flying different. though we haven't missed a shot with one yet :) like 5 times in one day xD.

20 AUTONOMOUS PROGRAMS!!!! WHAT IN THE HECK!!! lol, if only I didn't have to program our FRC bot I might have the time to do that, but as of now ummmm NO!! xD

Our team has something that a lot of teams don't speed at picking up balls so fast that we could gather 20 balls in 3 seconds, and our other team Atomix can do the same they are one of the only teams getting a Helix design to work.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

One of our sister teams, 354, got a helix to work very nicely. It holds ~20 balls and can empty itself in ~6 seconds from what I saw this weekend. Not sure about the pickup rate, but it's not really a big deal with a passive gate mechanism.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

I second both points made here, and congratulate Exploding Bacon on having so many autonomouses. :eek:

Because of the character limit imposed by the NXT's tiny screen, making a single program with a menu of modes to pick from may help out the drivers a bit; selecting Blue, then Score Preloaded is *apparently* much easier to read than B_SPre_Auto. XD

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

There is one thing that, I hate is the FRC CRio doesn't have a LCD screen at all so if nothings in it you'll never know.

Yeah, HEY Exploding Bacon!!! is one of your FTC team programmers on your FRC team?? I'm heading down with 1102 next week to Florida so we should talk man :D

So I know this isn't the forums for strategy but what are your plans for nationals??

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Yup. Download code, reboot, ensure "Robot code" light shows green, put on field. Otherwise, your changes may not have taken effect. ;) [[We've had a few times where downloading the code ended up not doing anything.]]

We have a decent bot, so I think we'll do well in worlds. I really want to see other designs and learn new things, though. After all, it isn't a FIRST championship if you're not going all googly-eyed over someone else's bot/code. :p

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

I hate that light thing!!!! SO MUCH!!! If anything goes wrong it's like an oops oh well sort of thing.

IDK bout the code part, no one was using NXT-G last year at nationals except me when I was on 1102. Though i have to say my transition into RobotC and LabVIEW was quite easy.

Our robot at the beginning was a child, but thing is starting to grow it's wings esp. since we beat out two of our own teams 1102, and 3923 who won SC State Day 1. We got beaten by the on day 2 playing defense against 315 and burned out our right motor in the semifinals but still went on to the finals, We re geared the system to have the speed and power of ten bears. and it ended up working for us without the slightest pit stop in TN.

The best part of nationals is going to be there is a team from Maryland also called G-FORCE, and we have been talking and if we're on an alliance or against each other it's due to be a funny match. Also weirdly our robots turned our slightly similar shooter wise.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Yeah. The lights are annoying. >.<

You use RobotC and LabVIEW? Cool. I'm mainly RobotC, because the LabVIEW programs last year took a while to compile, and- surprisingly- quite a bit of the NXT's puny SSD. I think I was able to get 6 on there before it ran out of space. >.<

Very nice. Seeing a huge amount of progress in your robot is always a good thing. :D

Having multiple teams with similar names in the same match as allies or opponents is always funny. :p We have 4 FTC teams, and all of them used to just be called "ILITE". So, if we were partnered up to two- or even three- in the same match, it would be "And on the red alliance, ILITE robotics, with ILITE robotics!" XD

I just finished all of the FRC coding I can do for the night (see: bugtesting all that I can with a bare cRIO), so I thinks I'm going to move on to programming our FTC autonomouses. In tallying up how many I have to make, I'm seeing numbers in the mid-teens. So, might as well get to work. ;)

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

yeah, that's hilarious >.<

I have 6 auto's for FRC
and now surprising even to me 19 auto's for FTC....I thought I couldn't do it XD

lol I need someone to shall I say robot Spar with xD.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

19 FTC Autonomouses?
And I need to make around 16 more.

I think our drivers are too spoiled. (And, considering we have around 5 or 6 matches in worlds, more than half of these autonomouses will never see the light of day :( )

Hold a mini-scrimmage, or ask one of your sister teams. If none of your sister teams want to, then make and program an FLL bot and have a rule that you can't get within 18" of it, unless it approaches you. Have someone drive it around.

If you're talking about autonomous spar, make the FLL bot a big stick that it holds in the air, and make it beep "SPARTA!" as it gets beat to shreds when it attempts to hold back your robot. XD

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

I should put a foot on it and have it spartan kick any robot that comes near it, 4 Sonar sensors. XD

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Actually our "head programmer" graduated last year but he goes to UCF so he is a mentor for our FRC team. The FTC team's coach is a programmer for Simsol, he taught most of us the basics of programming and then those interested in programming, I basically CADed the entire robot, i also designed some functions of the bot just to add more automodes to the robot... lets just say that if we were going to worlds and i could build my new drive train we could easily have 50 autonomous'.

The programming section of the team basically have worked for quite a while on the automodes considering the robot hasnt changed really since the first competition.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

having about 5-7 people on my team doesn't allow much of a team for programming.

And realizing now why would you want so many??
That would open a HUGE margin of error,
I would take 5-6 of the best ones and make the them godly perfect.

Ours are getting close to that, but I still have kinks to work out.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

This year we designed the robot to be very adaptable having that many automodes just allowed us to be more adaptable to an alliance strategy

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Very nice. Fifty autonomouses is quite a lot though. :eek:

If there was an award for "most autonomouses", your team would probably get it at worlds. :p I'm done with about 30% of FTC 1885's autonomous goals, so I should be done by the end of this week, with any luck at all. ^_^

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Get them done before Atlanta. There won't be any time for troubleshooting it there because you're going to be compiling notes on how to program and control our Poker Chip Swerve for next year ;)

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

They'll be done- and perfected- at least two weeks before worlds, so long as I get access to the robot for about half of a week. If our builders take it from me until worlds, there's not much I can do. :rolleyes:

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

We sadly did not earn our way into worlds this year so we wont be seeing you guys on the FTC side of FIRST who know with FRC though ill swing by your pits and check out the bot!

Currently im in a redesign of our bot just for fun the drive train will be great and will have an anti-jamming/shooter assembly. However fabrication of this design may or may not happen depending on the say of my mentor. lol

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Poker Chip Swerve huh? Do I sense yet another FTC crab drive in the midst? :eek:

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Nope, it's for FRC. Our mentors don't design or build anything for FTC and usually we have 1st-year kids on FTC (this year was an exception to that).

Come to think of it, with the addition of sprockets in FTC this year I think it's actually easy to do a non-coaxial swerve with all modules turned together.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

Its very easy to do I made one, but its not the best use of parts i just made one module on a tripod wheel base we havnt programed it yet but its hardwired and it works great

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

make a 4 wheel drive articulated steering system then we'll be impressed.....if only we had the parts.

Re: [FTC]: Autonomous?
 

When I have free time tomorrow I'll come and talk to you about FTC stuff Andrew.

I'm also planning to talk to smack and mirrors and the Minotaurs at the Demo they are doing at the regional tomorrow.