Quote:
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Originally Posted by Yan Wang
Autonomous mode usually consists of:
A) Robots doing nothing.
B) One robot doing a lot very quickly.
C) The majority of the time consisting of nothing, with very few exceptions.
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Many teams this past year, disabled their autonomous or ended up keeping it simple, like drive forward and push the moveable goal (or robot) to the other side. Many teams actually didn't want the balls to fall in Auto mode, since it was often more advantagous to move the moveable goal under the ball drop area and score an easy 4-5 balls. This year we worked hard on an auto program that included wheel counting and a yaw rate sensor - but found that it didn't really give us an edge and just kept it disabled for most matches. It seemed to heavily favor those few experienced teams who could accomplish several key tasks in auto mode.
In contrast, I thought the autonomous mode in 2003 was very successful since even the very inexperienced teams could write a simple auto program for dead reckoning the ramp and it proved to be very important which way that stack fell.
Perhaps going back to an auto mode where what is done in autonomous somewhat determines how the match is played. Perhaps a ramp or platform in the center of the field where balls (scoring objects) could be dropped onto at the end of autonomous. If your robot can get up there (or fight for position) during auto mode, it could catch the balls. If it didn't, more of the match would be spent gathering them up off the floor. I know the idea is not that original - but somehow get auto mode to be important (pointwise) and have it change how the rest of the match is played. That way, the matches are always different and fun to play and watch.