The general reasoning is that it's safest to be unpowered while physically carrying the robot around, the same reason we power off before removing our robots from the field, so that falls under the safe operation practices and procedures.
FTA's usually only make requests like these when trying to investigate or address a problem, so that doesn't mean we can't power up in queue to pre-charge our pneumatics, drop in new code, or verify that things are working.
The field personnel may request robot's be turned on early, if matches are really falling behind, to get things moving.
I know as CSA I occasionally request that a particular team be allowed to remove their robot from the field while still powered up, so I can inspect the bridge logs that are lost in a power down. But I ask the FTA first. Things like that are their call.
A memorable past instance of one field request to Not turn robots on before coming onto the field was 2010 when the recommended replacement for the old black bridge caused all the black bridges to be thrown off the field network. There was a particular startup sequence that had to be followed.
Last year robots were running with unrestricted video feeds, sometimes pulling 15Mb/s. Robots had to be turned on in sequence so the culprits could be identified.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
Really? I've heard FTAs recommending teams turn bots on at the end of the previous match, but I've never heard one insisting we leave a bot off till it's on the field. We've always turned our bot on well before we even step on the field to get the booting started so the radio is already booted and ready when we're on the field. It makes things run lots smoother and quicker, since the radio is the entire reason for the huge delay involved in a robot reboot. The radio takes a good 45-60 seconds to come up. The cRIO is usually up in 15-20 or so. At least that's about how long I estimate waiting whenever I warm boot the cRIO for programming purposes.
Anyways, I've never heard of FTAs requiring robots to be off, and I'm curious under what authority they'd do so. Is it the generic "Anything the FTA says goes" reasoning, or is there something in writing to back this up?
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