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Unread 26-04-2007, 20:20
ldeffenb ldeffenb is offline
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AKA: Lynn Deffenbaugh (Mr)
None #0386 (Team Voltage 386)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: Florida
Posts: 75
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Re: Post URL to your autonomous mode

386's most successful autonomous modes can be seen on YouTube at

Archimedes Autonmous (all 14) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iZxxcQADhM

Palmetto Q29 (double retry) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_2BXB8aMU8

Palmetto Q57 (sweet spot) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McvLJym0lhg

There's also a 4th video at:

Palmetto Q49 (run through the rack) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8uEfDExUR4

Our "Center Best" autonomous mode (the best of 14 modes including "Martian Rock") works like this:

1) Look for lights from the starting position

2) If we see two lights (very wide rectangle), make a choice:
2a) Centroid near the center, choose the dark foot
2b) Otherwise choose left or right depending on which the centroid is closer to

3) If the centroid is near enough the center, skip the next step

4) Attempt to acquire "the beam" (straight out from the foot) by turning the robot to move and track the centroid on the OPPOSITE side of the viewfinder as what it currently is. Continue driving this arc until the rectangle is either wider than it is tall or the tilt of the camera indicates that we're too close.

5) After arriving "on the beam" or if we start out with the light in the middle, drive the robot tracking the centroid in the center of the viewfinder using a PID controlling the speed targeting a pre-determined camera tilt value which puts the front of the robot about 2-4 inches INSIDE the rack.

6) When (if) the Easy button trigger hits the spider foot, activate scoring by dropping our face, cutting the vacuum (dropping the tube), raising the face and simultaneously backing the robot away from the rack. This is the same scoring sequence used automatically in tele-operated mode which is what made our robot so quick to score and hard to defend. We had no communication delay between the drive and manipulator when scoring.

7) If we arrive at too close a tilt or it takes too long to hit the trigger or the number of lights change, engage a retry sequence that backs the robot up a bit, waits for a new light acquisition, and goes back to step 5. This is why TyRap VII would back up sometimes during its approach to the rack, sometimes even right at the start which was rather disconcerting to the drive team.

To see some of our less-than-successful attempts at side and reverse (other end) scoring, pull the Palmetto and UCF autonomous from BitTorrent.

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage Video Hustler

PS. There are MPG versions of these available via BitTorrent at http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net:30049 Look for the 2007 386 Autonomous *.mpg .torrents.

Last edited by ldeffenb : 26-04-2007 at 20:36.