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Unread 05-03-2012, 06:34 PM
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Mentor
FRC #3081 (RoBoEaGleS)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 219
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Re: Off season controls projects

Quote:
Originally Posted by DjScribbles View Post
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!
Heres a project make a bot sense where a 3 near by ball is (ultrasonic sensor) then have it track picking up the three balls (photo sensor) and have a photo sensor loading system (ie ball in place stop belt, ball gone start belt until balls found.) then have another photo sensor track whether its on the key. and then have image processing aim. then have it vision processing track the lower center basket and have the bot programmed to line up with it on the fender. then have the bot turn 180 (gyro) have it go to the bridge (x seconds or possible encoders) have it lower bridge then have it auto balance (accelerometer) and then you have a fully autonomous rebound rumble bot. except in actuallity all the unaccounted for variables (mainly robots) would prevent it from working in competition.