Quote:
Originally Posted by Vogel648
I'd also like to congratulate Wild Stang for getting an autonomous working between competitions, I know how hard it is to test and finish an autonomous mode with limited time. I was just wondering why you did not attempt to score in autonomous in your first final match. We're glad to have your competition in autonomous mode, also nice job getting to the finals, it looked like those could have easily gone either way.
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Thanks for the kind words. To answer your questions, when we began this season, we made a conscious decision that we weren't going to dedicate as much time to autonomous (the last 4 years have been grueling). With the new clarified software rules, and the minimal impact on the game, we focused on making a machine that was easily controlled that could play the game well. We did play with some sensors to see what could be done, but we didn't have too much success. We knew up front that this decision would turn a lot of heads, but it just wasn't worth it.
There were two things that changed our minds
1. We overestimated the way that the refs were going to move the rack. When we saw how this was being done in reality, the wheels started spinning a little bit.
2. At Midwest, we saw 71 perform a maneuver that hadn't crossed our minds. They faced the rack and drove in an arc around the rack while facing the center of the rack. This got the wheels spinning faster.
After Midwest we began to see some of the benefits of scoring the keepers and put a little effort into autonomous (less than a fix-it window). We combined a single sonar sensor with the newly found arc maneuver and nailed it.
At West Michgan, we tuned some parameters for the real robot. It worked perfectly on the practice field, but would not work on the real field. The sonar didn't pick up the real spiders on Friday. At the end of the day, we made a realization that we weren't taking into account the difference between the wood spider feet and the diamond plate ones. FIRST graciously allowed us to use one of the feet for about 10 minutes at the practice field. With a few tweaks, we got it locked in.
The reason that we didn't run it the first match of finals was because we knew that 703 was going to come after us. We knew that they had the capability, but we didn't know the route(s) that they were capable of running. Once we saw what they did, Raul made the decision to try to run it.
You not only gained our competition in autonomous this weekend,. There were many teams that were impressive on the field. 33, 67, 397, 469, 1718 come to mind.
That said, thanks to 1504 for picking us, and to 302 for helping round out a great alliance. To all the teams that we faced during elims...thanks for the awesome competition. It was by far the most exciting tournament that I have experienced. Any of those alliance could have won at any time.