Autonomous Impressions

[Matt Krass]

What did everyone think of autonomous this year? I must say I was very impressed at both UTC and SBPLI regionals, it seemed like a lot more teams had a functioning autonomous, and it was nice to see matches where all six robots did something in autonomous to score, get ready to score, or block another team. I also think the camera was a big success this year, thanks to the hard work of Kevin Watson and others. I can't wait to see the autonomous modes in Atlanta.

What does everyone else think?

[DanDon]

I like autonomous this year. I did see the fact, as you mentioned, that more teams had autonomous, and I see that as a great improvement.

I also liked the fact that autonomous gave a greater advantage than it has in years past, and the fact that you can use the programming much more effectively throughout the game, but I would love to see a more complex task with more TIME next year. The time allotted to autonomous mode was really what was lacking this year.

What did everyone else think?

[nuggetsyl]

i like it this year because it is like a chess match

[The Lucas]

Starting all teams in the middle was a great idea. Now autonomous has a well defined offense and defense component. Now that simple run straight forward routine you wrote (or helped someone write ) before the elims can take down an ultra camera guided, one-week-in testing 10-ball shooting routine. Now thats an upset

[DanDon]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

Starting all teams in the middle was a great idea. Now autonomous has a well defined offense and defense component. Now that simple run straight forward routine you wrote (or helped someone write ) before the elims can take down an ultra camera guided, one-week-in testing 10-ball shooting routine. Now thats an upset

Well, that's not necessarily true.....during the finals matches in NYC, 421 or 759 set an intercept course at us (375). They hit us, turned us completely around 270 degrees. The robot caught on that we were facing the wrong way (go gyro!!), turned back towards the correct goal, aligned itself, and had enough time to sink 4 shots into the goal. I was so happy that my auton code worked that well!!

[sanddrag]

I think the camera is coming back, without question. (based on the many teams that had great success with it).

[Joel J]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I think the camera is coming back, without question. (based on the many teams that had great success with it).

Illuminated targets were key.

[DanDon]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Illuminated targets were key.

I wonder how much the extreme lighting in Atlanta will affect the camera. With the illuminated target, and the standard color range of tracking for the camera, do you think many teams will have problems getting correct target acquisition?

[X-Istence]

Originally Posted by dhoizner

I wonder how much the extreme lighting in Atlanta will affect the camera. With the illuminated target, and the standard color range of tracking for the camera, do you think many teams will have problems getting correct target acquisition?

I used the standard colors that Kevin Watson provided in his header file, and have not had any trouble at the NJ regional, I did not even change it a single bit during any of the matches. Was just a matter of getting the code we wanted to work the way we wanted it to work

[DanDon]

Originally Posted by X-Istence

I used the standard colors that Kevin Watson provided in his header file, and have not had any trouble at the NJ regional, I did not even change it a single bit during any of the matches. Was just a matter of getting the code we wanted to work the way we wanted it to work

I'm surprised. At the NJ regional, the lighting issues weren't too bad. We did have a match in the finals where 486 locked on to one of the overhead lights and dumped their whole load to that exact point. And throughout the regional we had the problem of the camera locking on to the lights off to the side of the field. After listening to me debate the issue and having multiple team members talk to pit admin, they decided to turn off one row of lights behind the blue alliance station, which did help.

Just remember, the lighting will be much more extreme in Atlanta, and it might have more of an effect.

[Mike Shaul]

As an electrical/software mentor I LOVE autonomous!!

The camera has been an interesting adventure. A lot of teams seem to have gotten the camera to work, but I think the number of teams with highly optimized search/lock is limited. I do like the fact that autonomous is a large advantage, it has encouraged more used of the light/camera and they've done a great job of improving the camera performance (but it is still challenging for teams that want continuous improvement/perfection).

I definitely wish autonomous mode was longer, but with the game this year it makes sense, the real challenge is the time limit (and handling defense), since the camera performance is better.

[Donut]

This year's autonomous is a large step up from any previous year's. This is the first year where more than a small handful of teams used non-dead reckoning methods for autonomous, had more robots moving in autonomous than any previous year, and had robots consistently scoring in autonomous. The only things I would want them to change in the focus for next year's autonomous would be to increase the time back to 15 seconds (now that teams have proven they will use the time) and to allow for multiple methods of tracking to targets (similar to how they had both lines to follow and IR beacons to recieve in 2004). They could even have 2 different objectives that would require different tracking methods to get there.

[Jonathan Norris]

I must say that this year autonomous has been a great success, mainly because of its increased importance. for most matches where you are not playing a team who can put up 40+ points, winning autonomous is huge, and can often account for almost half of a alliances points. Scouting for autonomous modes is huge, and has won or lost many matches. In our case we had to do a large amount of scouting before every match to know if a team was going to stop our shooting, or are we up against an effective autonomous shooter who we will need to stop.

By the elimination rounds it really did turn into a chess match where changing your starting time by .5 of a sec could totally throw off a defensive robot, I saw 703 do this effectively a few times. As Karthik properly termed, this is the year of "Autonomous Chess."

[JJG13]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

i like it this year because it is like a chess match

I think of this year's autonomous mode as more like a game of rock-paper-scissors.


This year is the best game as far as autonomous mode is conserned. I just wish we had 15 seconds instead of 10.