Thread: Minibot deployment
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Unread 28-03-2011, 14:45
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Re: Minibot deployment
Quote:
Originally Posted by jvriezen View Post
This sounds very effective.. I like the interconnect between the switches and the drive power. I had a similar idea (never implemented) where the switches would simply cause driver control panel lights to illuminate. In theory, you shouldn't get bumped (penalty) after you are touching the tower, but that doesn't stop it from happening, of course.

John Vriezen
Team 2530 "Inconceivable"
Mentor, Drive coach, Inspector
The "safe" period doesn't start until the 10 sec mark and we decided to plan to head there early in case there was defense along the way or there were tubes we needed to push away from the base. In later qualifying matches one of the teams we loaned a minibot to in Seattle got knocked out of alignment at about the 12sec mark and they lost contact before the 10 sec mark and were pushed far enough away and pinned just long enough to prevent them from lining up again since the had no alignment system and had to eyeball it. We are extremely happy with how it has worked.

edit: I should add we were happy with how it worked once it was implemented as designed and tested at home. In Seattle we weren't very successful and didn't have as high a success rate as those we loaned minibots to who had no alignment system. That was due to 2 reasons. #1 was the driver didn't deploy the flippers until the bot was in contact with the base, this allowed a greater misalignment than the "V" in the tray could compensate for. The other bigger issue was our lead programmer has a bad case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. So he threw out the code developed by the align/deploy team's programmer. The original code left the flippers out and the motors going until a separate button was pushed to deactivate it. To make it "better" he combined the switch to cut motor power, retract the flippers, and deploy the minibot at the same time. Since the bot was pushing hard against the base the bumper was compressed and as soon as the motors were shut down the bumper acted as a spring pushing the bot back away from the base resulting in mis-alignment and/or being too far from the pole for the minibot to trip its' latch and lock on to the pole.
Last edited by Mr V : 28-03-2011 at 15:43.