Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

We mapped the left and right arm controls to our 2011 telescope and wrist today. Left arm controls the telescope height, right arm controls the wrist angle. Definitely stopped work in the lab for the interactive demonstration! Obviously the gains could use some additional tweaking, but it was pretty fun to see working.

Video is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFsYMiGbDss

We used RobotPy for 2011 competition, so the robot code is Python for this demonstration as well.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

What's the orange banana costume for?

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

It's our team captain wearing our surfboard mascot. Per the i.am.first video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLMOKM4QKcE, about 7 minute mark), our mascot could be interpreted as a banana or sweet potato, but is actually a surfboard.

The Kinect control does work a bit better without the costume (as the costume makes the head look really big to the Kinect), but we thought it'd be fun for the video.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

Banana? I thought that was a surf board.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

Sorry, my bad! I forgot you guys were 294, and your mascot was a surfboard. So when I watched it, my first thought was, "Why is the driver wearing and orange banana?"

Great video, and great maneuvering! As a driver, I could never control a robot like that.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

Bwahaha that part at ~28secs makes me laugh. The height factoring in is going to play a role I feel. And looks like to keep with the game we're going to have to go ahead and buy a Kinects and start messing around with it.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

Very Cool!!
Nice work people!

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

I don't know if you're aware or not, but every Kit of Parts for the 2012 season will have a Kinect. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlgA2nlXUF8)

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

True, but I don't believe six weeks is long enough to get, code, and mess around with one.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

Coming from a mechanical background and not a programming one, I wonder whether scaling the heights will solve the height issues. In other words, you can set it such that when the a button is pressed (this can be a physical button, such as a joystick button or something on the Classmate DI dashboard), the Kinect will calibrate the highest hight of the hand as the top of the mast. To be clear, create a calibration system that registers the height of the hands at any given time the button is pressed to be the highest point on the mast.

1515 did this, while not to interface with a Kinect, in the 2011 season. Each time our robot's mast hit the base-pan, thus triggering a vex limit switch, the position was registered as 0. I can put you in contact with our programmers (Java) if you're interested in more detailed information.

Nonetheless, it looks and works fantastic. I am really impressed by the consistency in the Kinect's interpretation of joint positioning. Great job.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

The mission of the Beta Test teams is to REPORT ALL FINDINGS and also hold public seminars for all teams. I know that is not the same as playing with a Kinect yourself, but I am sure that all of the teams will try to make it so that you can get something working very early in the build season.

Re: Video: Team 294 driving telescope with Kinect
 

Actually the issue in this case was the costume; the "head" is interpreted as the top of the surfboard, so the arms seem pretty short in comparison. It scales properly (and generally works much better) without the costume, but the costume made for a much better video :cool: