Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
I've also heard of an E-stopped robot continuing to wander slowly across the field. (This was over 10 years ago.) Seems the batteries were surface charging, and the controller had enough voltage to drive the motors--slowly--but not enough to read an E-stop signal from the radio.  |
I would be somewhat terrified to see an E-stopped robot still moving across the field.
Just after our Rookie season, we were demo-ing our robot at the main office building of our biggest sponsor along with two other teams. We were outside, and for some reason, did not have the robot cart for the driver's to set the laptop on to drive. So one person was holding the driver's laptop while the driver held the joystick in one hand and drove with the other. As the driver was turning all the way in one direction, the person holding the laptop accidentally hit the power button, setting the laptop to sleep. For some reason, instead of disabling the robot or ceasing input, the robot locked into the last signal it had received from the driver: turning in place at full speed.
Soon, the force from the robot spinning flung the battery out of the robot and sent it sliding against the concrete.
So, as any group of high schoolers would do, we brushed the battery off and zip-tied it back in. But as soon as the driver re-enabled the Driver Station, the robot immediately went back into its death spin and flung the battery out in exactly the same fashion. To this day, we don't drive the robot unless the laptop is firmly secured onto the cart or the Driver's Table, just like at a competition.