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Unread 19-02-2003, 03:31
Lindy Lindy is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: West Covina, CA
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Done as of last Saturday. Actually, that was a revision -- the core autonomous program was completed a bit before (I have 1,780 bytes of storage per bank now!). This is a strange case where the autonomous code was actually finished before the final main robot code (!).

What does it do? Just as simple and unsophisticated as you can get (besides not moving at all): Dead reckoning, because we were simply too lazy to put in real detection of external stimuli (I think). Actually, I call it "copy-cat" dead reckoning because the code actually doesn't know how to move the bot at all; it contains no movement instructions. Rather, it records its movements when the robot is actually driven (after the user activates the robot's programming mode) and stores it into EEPROM. When it goes into full autonomous mode, it'll replay back the instructions it recorded.

We can store four autonomous movement paths in this manner and they could all be inversed, so that it will be able to play the instructions back if it's on the other side of the field from where it was programmed at (in theory). I intended the whole system to be easy to use so that you can change the behavior of the robot without having to touch a computer or a line of PBASIC.

It worked quite well so far. However, I can just foresee the huge list of possible pitfalls this thing could ensure. Joy. At Chatsworth, we actually loaded a movement path for the robot about five minutes before our first match outside in a wide hallway- not a good thing as far as bug-testing goes. And, there's always pure human error: In our last match, someone oriented the robot backwards in its starting position... the robot's dumbfire autonomous mode didn't help it at all.

Last edited by Lindy : 19-02-2003 at 03:35.