[Matt Adams]

I guess that I'd just like to say a few things about the this project... not to stand up and say, "this is impossible for you guys!" but just as a tiny warning... this application is very different from a FIRST robotics project.

I would say, without a doubt, that your biggest problem is going to be repeatability. 10 hours a day is about 10 times more running time (consecutively) than a standard FIRST robot has in its entire competitive life cycle.

As a heads up, here some things that you're going to need to look into, which are a lot different from FIRST robotics:

Motors: You're going to need to aquire some near industrial grade motors that can work continuously. I'd shy away from using any of the motors that FIRST gives you - I'd venture to say it would be very difficult to ensure that they can reliably run in this continuous application. Drills and chips get warm after a two minute (albeit full throttle) match. 10 hours of stop and go would probably be significantly more intense.

Battery Power: In short, I don't think that you'd be able to run this on batteries for this long of a life cycle, which means that this guy may have to be teathered... I don't know how much maintaince you'd be able to provide for the robot while it's on display, but I'd imagine you'd be darn close to dead after a half hour while powering the speakers, motors, CPU. You may want to make this your number one priority in further research... is it even possible to run a robot for this long on batteries, and what kind of maintaince will be required? Even having 4 or 6 batteries... I'd be tempted to say that it might not be able to go all day. I may be wrong, but I think power management will be key for this application.

Repeatability: I'd venture to say that even the best autonomous programs in FIRST robotics wouldn't be remotely repeatable after 10 hours. 10 hours is 2400 times longer than the autonoumous programs that a FIRST robot uses. To put this in perspective, a robot that's off by 1" of an inch in an autonmous program that lasts 15 seconds could end up being 200 feet off by the end of the day (assuming continous motion). Assuming it's only running for 5% of the time still puts it 10 feet off course.

I would definitely look into using a line tracking sort of method, because I think that's the only way that you'll be able to limit the perpetual error that will come out over so much use in other autonomous methods.


Overall, I think it's great that you're getting involved in your community like this, but I caution you to do a LOT of background research into this specific application. It's definitely ambitious!

Good luck!

Matt