[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

I am kind of curious about the concern teams have with amount of time allotted for calibrating on the fields.

While it is never explicitly stated what teams will be allowed to do I don't think expecting to run autonomous as you guys discussed is realistic. Bill's post allots time for teams to "Calibrate their sensors"; calibrating sensors would not include adjusting distances for dead reckoning. Calibrating sensors seems to suggest that teams that need to adjust settings or thresholds for line following or vision would be able to adjust them a competition equivalent lighting environment. I see the need for teams using vision and FIRST implemented a similar system in at least 2006 and 2007 and it worked fine. I don't see the need for line following robots as the color differences are obvious enough that loose thresholds should account for lighting variations, I guess teams may use the sensors in a way I wouldn't expect but my assumption is that it would be the exception, not the rule.

While there are 160 teams that could potentially need to calibrate on each pair of fields I would venture a guess that less than 10% of them have sensors that actually need to be calibrated.

I know many teams who have had issues with light sensors this year and the calibration values needed to get them to run properly event to event.

Also, calibrating distance values isn't necessarily for dead reckoning teams. Most teams use some sort of encoder in their drive system that allows them to drive a given distance. For placing these tubes and lining up, a couple inches can make a huge difference (compounded when you try to score 2, or even 3 ubertubes ). Field to field variations have tripped up our autonomous and I know this is the case for other teams as well.

Flat out running autonomous modes would be impossible. However, I include in my definition of calibrating sensors, drive encoders and the like. That would entail measuring field dimensions etc., which is STRICTLY disallowed at every competition I have been to. I'd be interested to see if they allow teams to measure the fields during this calibration period.

-Brando