Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamHeard
The difference being the new system is far from plug and play, and currently the software has shown some quirks.
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I have been following this thread and felt compelled to add my opinion (Note
pinion).
I was concerned that the 2009 control system would introduce so much new complexity and potential bugs that our team would suffer. Instead, the programming team jumped from 2 members to 10 members and our robot control was better than ever. I attribute this to several things:
- We had excellant support for the new hardware. The web based videos and resouces from NI were very helpful. Team 16 (one of the beta testers) did a local seminar which helped a lot.
- We standardized on Labview. This made it much less intimidating for the new programmers in the group. Again, the NI online material was excellant.
- We had several laptops for development. Each was able to work independently on one aspect of the programming (PID contol steering, vision, autonomous).
- There were continuous updates from FIRST, NI and on CD. When we encountered an ethernet port outtage on the DS, we knew what it was.
I'm excited to see all of the new capabilities teams will incorporate into their robots in coming years. I want to see robots that sense and react to the game itself. I feel this new control system is a big step towards achieving that.
We are engineers after all so I say "Bring on the technology"!
