[ebarker]

good question: I think we have two different answers, two different goals.

a) a cRio emulator that will run a program we compile for the robot. something a person could write code for, then execute, and have 'virtual instrumented' and watch gauges for the various things that are happening.

b) a Labview program that is a physics based simulator, that feeds back information to the FRC DS and custom dashboard.

A little background.....

Our team, FRC 1311, is a year round affair. Currently we are one of 14 Lemelson-MIT Inventeams nationally. We are building a robot that is an oil skimmer and the control system shares a lot of components with an FRC robot. However it is not currently using a cRio.

What we did is use Simulink from Mathworks. We created two things, both using Simulink:

a) a physics based simulator
b) a driver station

The DS handles the user controls and dashboard and implements a telemetry stream to the robot via UDP/IP. Onboard there is an ARM based linux computer that is a communications processor and muxs/demuxs data to a pwm controller, GPS, and other things we can think of, like an "Adventure Game", haha..

The goal is to have a DS and a simulator with identical user interfaces, except the simulator is physics based. This December we will go back to Orlando and exhibit the project at I/ITSEC as part of the student exhibitions.

In time, we would like to replicate this effort substituting Simulink for Labview. For those Labview gurus that know how then obviously that is easy, but if you don't know how, like us, then it isn't so easy.

We also have a relationship with the engineering/simulation/education people at Wright Patterson AFB. WPAFB is basically the engineering/program management hq for the U.S. Air Force. One of the "big picture" goals here is to introduce simulation to high schools on a national basis. Just as it took FIRST years to get to where it is today, it will take a while to get HS simulation going.