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Unread 26-04-2015, 14:02
matan129 matan129 is offline
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FRC #4757 (Talos)
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Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anupam Goli View Post
There's a reason why control systems is one of the toughest subjects in mechanical and electrical engineering, and why controls engineers are heavily sought after in the job marketplace. Controls is definitely not trivial. As RC said, you may not understand what "controls" means. I suggest you look at some of the code 254 and 1114 have released previously.
Without getting personal here - Please, I am well aware of what controls are. I also did already see 254's code and it isn't very complex. There's just a lot of it.

I want to go ahead and further clarify that I wasn't at any point suggesting that general controls programming is easy, nor that the programming you might learn at FRC is not extensive.

I meant that the FRC controls are boring, and I'm speaking solely about the robot code. Especially when the common programming language for the cRIO / RoboRIO is LabVIEW (our team is C++ing, though), you don't really learn too much when comparing, for example, to the mechanical knowledge you might gain from a good season in FRC. The only way IMHO to gain real and comprehensive knowledge with programming at FRC is to do something that is not directly related to the robot (i.e. 254's ChessyArena is absolutly fantastic), but again - few are the teams that do such projects.
The other option IMHO is to do CV - but it didn't get you real advantage in any of the last years games. Even last year the hot goal reflector was broken. I think this symbols how FIRST treats CV.

Also, I think I can safely presume that the code at 254 is more complicated than the code you will find on the average team (i.e. TrajectoryLib ). All powerhouse teams have complex mechanics, and us such these teams have more systems to control. Programming more cylinders is exactly the same as programming a few in terms of complexity.
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