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Unread 31-07-2010, 16:55
RobertG RobertG is offline
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Re: Preparing CS students for the Robotics Revolution

In addition to creating games that encourage more autonomy, I see two other ways that software development could be encouraged. The first would be to lower the price of a second control system. This would allow teams to create a programming testbed and develop game specific algorithms (such as target tracking) concurrently during the build season with mechanical design.

Even after the software has been developed it still needs to be transfered and adapted to the actual robot. This process, however can't happen until the robot is mechanically and electrically complete. Unfortunately, because of the short build period this leaves very little time for programming. To fix this aggravating problem there could be a programming period after the main build period where only software, and perhaps minor electrical, changes could be made. This year our team was fortunate enough to have a second electrical system on which we developed target tracking software early in the build season, unfortunately, because the mechanical team kept improving the robot we never had the opportunity to transfer it to our competition robot. A separate programming period would mean much more time spent programming and thus the creation of robots with more sophisticated autonomous capabilities.