[Petey]

I was just going to post about this, actually.

Our lead controls mentor was just asking me to crunch some numbers on the subject. We've found that, if you are starting on the side (inside the blue line), and if your robot goes for the first center vision tetra, and if you measure at 90 degree angles assuming a zero turning radius and no time loss per turn, it is a 39.75 foot journey to be able to be in a position to stack on the center goal.

At 7 FPS--the middle ground between our robot's top speed of 10 FPS and bottom speed of 5 FPS--that takes about 5.7 seconds. Call it six, factoring in other problems.

If we assume 5 seconds to grab the vision tetra--not unreasonable--that gives you 11 seconds.

4 seconds to fight your way to the goal and score the tetra.

And that is assuming everything goes perfectly.

For this reason, the mentor will be putting together some serious numbers in an effort to ask FIRST to extend the autonomous mode to 25 seconds.

That is assuming that no one has had an inordinate amount of success with this issue. So, the question is...have you?

--Petey