[DjScribbles]

I am a new programming mentor in FRC (this was my rookie year), and my team has never used much in the way of sensors beyond limit switches (as far as I know) before this year. I was also the primary programmer for the robot this year, because our team never had much interest in programming, and I didn't know enough about the environment to learn and teach at the same time, but I want to change that as much as I can.

I'm looking for any and all controls projects that maybe valuable for kids to learn, to help our team (and area teams) build a more competitive field in south-west Michigan.

Here are a few ideas I've come up with:
Path-following drive train: Building a drive train using encoders with the ability to follow a predetermined path reliably.
Shooter Speed control: How to close the loop for shooter wheels.
Light Sensor Line following: Using light sensors to track a line on the floor.
Game piece detection: using optical sensors to track your manipulation of game pieces (such as ball possession).
Camera Tracking: Using the axis cams to track rectangles, extracting info from the image such as distance, angle, etc.

So, what else do people do? What has been useful in the past? What do people think will be useful going forward?


My goal in all of this is to get with some other engineers in the area, and host any interested kids from area teams (we have about 10 teams in the area), to help populate our area with good robots and great programmers!