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Unread 14-03-2011, 00:19
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Re: Should We Program Autonomous For the Y?

Quote:
Originally Posted by lineskier View Post
From watching the matches, it seems as though many drivers have a tough time lining up just right. This is something that is very easy for the camera to do, the camera is awesome for centering the peg, and a rangefinder is awesome for knowing the distance to the goal.
It is my and our team's mentality that automation during teleop should only exist to improve speed of particular tasks. For example, we have buttons to raise the lift to all 6 possible positions, because that's an arbitrary task that will be consistent every single time. We have a button that "autoscores" a tube because it requires running the gripper, lift, and arm all at the same time, which is too difficult for one drive to do on his own quickly.

Such fine tuning is a driver issue. The driver should, with practice, be able to line himself up while moving towards the pegs. I understand that it won't be perfect every time, but if this is a consistent problem where the camera is necessary for fine tuning, then it should be on the drivers to get lined up better, not the code. Never fix driver mistakes in code.

This is how we approach it, and other teams do it differently. I've fallen under the trap of worrying about how "cool" a feature is over how functional the past three years of FIRST, and I think (read: hope) that I've nailed that sweet spot of functionality and simplicity my senior year.
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