[sanddrag]

I am not a programmer but I'll explain it to the best of my abilities. Our robot has azimuth and elevation control on the shooter. We have pots on both. The camera has it's own azimuth and elevation control (the one provided in the kit) using servos. The camera is mounted to the shooter azimuth but not the shooter elevation. When the aim button is pressed, the camera searches for the target. When the target is found, it locks on. Then, the "brains" say "okay, where are my camera's servos pointed right now?" and "where do my shooter's pots say it is pointed right now?" and "why the heck aren't they pointing the same way?" and "let's make them point the same way." This all happens in about half a second. That is a non-programmer's description of it. Anyway, because of our turret, we can be pushed around and still be locked onto the goal. At the SoCal regional, it worked so well we won the Radio Shack Innovation in Control Award for it. However, after we won that award, teams came up with autonomous modes (ramming) specifically against us. When they hit us hard, we remained dead locked on the target, but the balls in the feeder mechanism jammed, and we could not use our unjamming function until driver control mode. In one of our Saturday qualifying matches, we made some really long shots, from our low down shooter even with robots trying to block us because we could reposition and still be locked on or easily lock on again.

Also, on our feeder mechanism, we have a light sensor so when the light beam is broken, the motor stops until the "fire" button is pressed again. This allows indexed feeding and control of exactly how many balls we shoot.