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Originally Posted by mtrawls
...I think it may be helpful to write down and share a sample problem, so that others may get what exactly you want the competition to be. If you want the problem to be something that requires a near perfect simulation of a FIRST match -- well, in my most humble opinion, that would take quite a while to program and debug (is the target to have it done this year, or is this a project you plan on implementing next year, using this year to work it out?).
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Originally Posted by Texan
You can feel free to ignore this (  ), as I probably won't be able to participate, but I personally feel that it would be better to have one robot that everyone must program, instead of allowing them to make their own. It takes some of the challenge out of it if you can add a gazillion ( ) sensors around the edges of your robot, instead of having design a way to work with only two sensors. Whatever, you can ignore me. 
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At the very least, some rules regarding number of sensors and such should probably be added. |
I know this would be extrodinarily complex, that's why I'm not even trying to go solo on this. Obviously, there would be rules on sensors and such (16 pwms, 18 dig IO, 16 analog in, 8 relay).
Obviously, there would be a template bot for this, however I feel that if a team wants to take the time to make thier own bot, they should have the option to do that. Plus it's way cooler.
If you are afraid of some one programming something that's impossible, that's what people are for.
This is the simplest way I could think of without doing AutoCad (Several thousand per liscense). If you look at
LDraw, it uses a text-based format with 5 types of lines. It is simple, but you can do a lot with it (not curves). Same with this. You can't do EVERYTHING, but you can come pretty close.
This will probably end up as a post-season project, however I think the FIRST programmer community can do this, especially if everyone pitches in a little bit. You know the hudereds/thousands of 3D games that contain a physics engine? We should be able to wrangle up something. Plus, you don't have to have a human interface.
I'm surprised: No one mentioned the dificulty of a simulator, Your all talking about the engine. Maybe it will be a set of intertwined DLLs developed in many languages.
I think about the rewards of even coming half-way to perfecting this: an autonomous simulator, something to test a bot on while the bot is built (or shipped). Such a simulator would be the coolest thing I've seen since I've registered (a mere 57 days ago!), and more than worth it.
Granted, this project will be
HUGE, definately going to be on Sourceforge or someone's web space (Volunteers?), but the journey will be fun (Plus, some one can tell me why I can't init variables in the middle of a procedure). Ok, please don't quote me on that.
So maybe we can make an atempt at the 2nd largest Open Source project (1st: Linux). May be we'll fail miserabley in the atempt. It isn't impossible, such projects have been done before, and maybe with pooled intelect there will be enough brains to tackle this 1000-pound quarter-back (bad metaphor). Such projects aren't impossible, just hard. But Gates didn't write Windows, and Linus didn't make RedHat. Don't know 'till we try.
So who's with me?