I've been living in a hole (my bedroom studing for exams) for the past week or so. First off, a question about the uber-accurate Wildstang Positioning System (WSP perhaps?):
1. How were you able to account for wheel slipping? This would occur when your robot would be pushed (while wheels were locked) or sliding down the ramp (for example). I'd immagine that such 'small' inaccuracies could addup to more then +/- 1-inch by the end of the match.
Back to our autonomous mode. I'm thinking (I'm the only programmer on our team) of using a IR seeking/dead reckoning hybrid. If at any point the beacon is blocked, dead (sorry, read 'ded.') reckoning would kickin. It would be adaptive, so the robot would continue in that direction until the beacon can be seen again. The dead/ded. reckoning system would rely on a counter to determine how much longer to go forward, not to overshoot the target.
I'm thinking of having a collision avoidance system; a set of sensors (sonar?) that would try to avoid obsticals (such as robots) by driving around them. It would also try to avoid the platform and the guard rail.
On a sidenote, herding balls will be interesting. I'd imagine that they'd go all over the place unless your robot has a neat device that would keep them under control
Nevertheless, I'd like to hear more on other team's autonomous ideas.