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Unread 12-01-2009, 17:49
Joshamuffin Joshamuffin is offline
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Re: Autonomous Strategies

Some sort of randomizer would be nice. Opposing teams would not be able to predict where you might go. However, this randomization might leave you in an unstratiegic spot. I.E. crashed into a wall. A controlled randomizer would be alot better. Maybe some DIP switches could feed input as to where you start at so a properly controlled course could be randomized.

One way for this to be done would be an "on-the-fly" randomizer. This randomizer would determine direction and how long it will go in that direction when it is needed. The program could check approximate postion to where it might turn out to be when it completes the "turn," modifying the values as needed to turn out not to crash into the wall.

Another way would be to plan out so many turns in advance and attempt to take said course. The disadvantage is when it gets bumped it diverts the robot off-course. The on-the-fly version could have an accelerometer to detect when it gets bumped and re-randomize the course as needed After impact.

This, however, is a very intensive algorithm and would take alot longer to debug than a simpler autonomous mode. However, I will try to suggest this to the team and subsequently attempt to program it if they agree.