Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle
I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned by the DS discussions on this thread.
The FRC robots can be very inspiring. Or they can hurt people -- permanently.
Especially when others are around your robot, please be sure that you all know how to operate it safely. That means whatever DS you are using works reliably and all present team reps know how to stop a robot being driven by, oh maybe, your grandma or a show-off teenager who thinks they are playing GTA with your robot.
Also consider making a demo-mode, with scaled down speeds and removing pointy things and spring-loaded whammies.
FIRST has left the protocol open, meaning that you can build your own DS. The robot code will default to safe if the DS crashes or the communications gets scrambled. But it will not be safe if the DS is unresponsive to the operator or goes into a loop sending commands with no way to stop it except for a tackle.
Please be safe. Test whatever DS you are using, and think of it as an important safety feature.
Greg McKaskle
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I agree with you.
As for this application, I have implemented a watchdog timer that will disable the robot and "reset" the communications if no robot response is received. As for the sending part, I do not use any loops, instead, I use some timers that run on a separate thread (to ensure that they are triggered at the correct time frames).
Our team has tested the application thoroughly, and at least with the robots of my team, we did not have any issues. Just as a side note, you can trigger the emergency stop by pressing the SHIFT key,
not the SPACE key. The reason behind that is that some widgets or the OS itself may reserve the use of the spacebar key.
As for the discussion of a robot driving another robot, I stated that it is possible (theoretically), however, I would not want to try it and I do not condone such behavior.
Finally, I also agree with you about the "demo-mode". The robots that we use for public presentations have an option in the SmartDashboard to control the maximum speed that the motors/actuators can have, this can be useful for presentations, testing and in the competition itself.
Every team member should also have basic knowledge about how to operate a robot, being safe while driving it and know what to do when the robot misbehaves.