Drive Control Systems: SOAD and Wii
 

Last winter, as our team was deciding on our driver controls, debating tank, arcade, and other ideas, we came on a really cool idea: Semi-omni-arcade drive. The driver would point the joystick in the direction it needed to go, and using a gyro, the robot would go to that direction relative to the driver. After some testing, we decided it would be a better summer project, and went on our merry way. Later, when it was summer, we were thinking of cool drive control systems and thought the Cypress's accelerometer would be a cool way to drive.

Now, we have both of these working, and they are just cool! The Cypress board was surprisingly very easy, and was soon called a "Wii" drive by the rest of the team after I finished it one meeting and everyone wanted to try it.

Videos and Code: http://thecatattack.org/DriveSystems

The code also has a white ball on green tracking function, and a CANGroup that groups 1-4 CANJaguars in a sync for left/right so you can still use the RobotDrive class.
Also, when you enable, hold down button 11 for SOAD, 12 for tracking, and press 10 at any point to reset (or switch modes). It defaults to Wii drive.

Re: Drive Control Systems: SOAD and Wii
 

That's pretty sweet. Now see if you can make it into a glove and point to where you want the robot to go!

Re: Drive Control Systems: SOAD and Wii
 

Now you're playing with power

Re: Drive Control Systems: SOAD and Wii
 

Nice work. The SOAD is pretty interesting. I've seen similar things done for fully holonomic robots before, but it's cool to see the same behavior from a limited degree-of-freedom bot.

-Joe

Re: Drive Control Systems: SOAD and Wii
 

Have you tried using an actual Wii controller?

Oh and whats the accuracy on you accelerometers? I've been messing with using an actual Wiimote and I've noticed that the values constantly change, even when I'm not moving.

Re: Drive Control Systems: SOAD and Wii
 

No, is it just a USB connection?

I have not inspected closely the values, but from a driver standpoint, it seems to be fairly consistent. We had it driving for over 5 minutes, and at the end, I don't remember any odd behavior (except for the movement getting a little weaker, but the robot we are using drains the battery after about 3 minutes when all systems are on)