[Tom Bottiglieri]

Our autonomous mode was programmed using a self servicing command structure. We wanted to have full access to the field at the click of a button, but did not want go through the pain that is trigonometry on the PIC processor. We decided we wanted to use a pocket PC based map of the field to create way point data. Also, we wanted to get rid of most of the processing overhead on the handheld's processor, leaving us free to run a variety of sensors and a robot waypoint navigation system without the trouble of a co-processor.

To do this, we created a map of the field in Visual Basic with the coordinate system being the amount of encoder ticks it would take our robot to traverse from one side to the other. We are able to draw waypoints, and insert actions at each waypoint (shift gears, auto track corner goal, spit balls, suck in balls, change speed, change orientation.. etc) The VB program then made a list of commands, which were stored as base 255 numbers in the eeprom on the RC. Our RC program was made to accept incoming serial data and throw it in the eeprom.

We are able to select which autonomous mode we would like to use from a serial LCD on the robot, as well as access full diagnostics, such as feedback on all inputs and outputs. This has helped us tremendously and makes preparing the robot for matches ten times easier.