Quote:
Originally Posted by reversed_rocker
Well lets just say that we are going to play a fully autonomous robot for this years game. Many games have the same theme involving a ball that needs to be picked up, thrown, tossed, ect. so some of the same ideas are likely to apply
First thing, find a ball.
You could have 4 sonic rangers across the front of the ball on the front of the robot. These sensors would be spaced apart just under the diameter of a ball. What you could do is have it so that the robot spins until there is an object that gives approximately the same distance for two and only two of the sensors, this would be a ball.
Getting the ball
For this robot it would be difficult to guide the robot so that the ball would hit a particular point to be picked up by a vacuum or small ball roller, so i would suggest a double ball roller that runs as far across the robot as possible (I'm thinking a robot very simular to 1918 or 1986). When the robot finds something that it thinks is a ball, it would stop spinning and drive forward. On the both sides of robot you could have 2 photo transistors lined up parallel to the ball roller about 1.5-2 in inside the frame. This way the robot could tell when it has a ball and approximately where on the robot the ball has stuck (we use the same sensor to detect when a ball is in our vacuum, easy to use and very reliable).
Shooting the ball
Since the photo transistors aren't that accurate, you would have the code split the ball roller into 3 sections: left side of the robot, middle of the robot, right side of the robot. The robot would then spin until the camera sees the goal. The gyro would have to be set at the beginning of the match so that the robot knows which side of the field to shoot at. Once the robot sees the target, you can line up your shot using the camera again and fire. Then you start over with the ball collection phase of the code
special considerations:
This would take some playing around with, you would probly have to throw in some timing aspects so that the robot doesnt get stuck on one part of the code. Things like "if you saw a ball 10 seconds ago and you havent picked it up, go back to finding balls" or "if you dont have a ball anymore, go back to finding balls" or "if it takes your more than 5 seconds to find the goal, drive forward and try again". The sonic rangers could be used for basic driving manuevers, If more than 2 of the sonic rangers sees an object less than 3 feet away then it would turn around.
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reversed_rocker, I feel like I overlooked your posts.
Could you copy your sensor ideas to the
Autonomous Perception thread?
You said the passing feature would be the easiest to implement, because you would not need to track other robots?
I think you're right.
I think it also narrows down the information we need to two things:
- What zone am I in
- Where are the gamepieces around me?
We could probably say that a robot should only be in the "passing" role if it is in the middle or far zone, and there are game pieces near.
I just realized that there are situations where a robot does not fit any of the three roles I've mentioned so far. It's when the robot is moving to a different area because there's nothing to do where it is.
Although it usually only happens once or twice in a match, it's an important strategic decision. (If you're scoring, and you run out of game pieces, are you supposed to just sit there and wait until another 'bot brings you some more?)