Unique ways of controlling your robot (driving)

[AmoryG]

The 2008 competition is mine and my team's rookie year. This year I was the sole student programmer with about no experience with programming. I received tons of help from my mentors and I was able to help program the robot with their assistence. Because of this a lot of the time I was doing things on my own and I did a lot of experimenting.

With my mentors, we came up with quite a few ways of driving the bot. I won't share the code right away (I need to get it first), but would anyone like to share and explain their methods of controlling the driving of the robot? I'm really curious what you guys did.

These are the things we tried (I'll share the code when I get it)...

1. Double Joystick: very hard to control. We tried a lot to make it more controlable, but it never worked out well.

2. Single Joystick 1: One speed, 4 ways of moving robot. Push the joystick up and it moves forward. Push it down it moves backwards. Left it turns a bit left and right it turns a bit right.

3. Other single joystick controlls: We made a few other single joystick control systems. One we used in the competition.

I apologize in advance if broke some sort of rule

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AmoryG

The 2008 competition is mine and my team's rookie year. This year I was the sole student programmer with about no experience with programming. I received tons of help from my mentors and I was able to help program the robot with their assistence. Because of this a lot of the time I was doing things on my own and I did a lot of experimenting.

With my mentors, we came up with quite a few ways of driving the bot. I won't share the code right away (I need to get it first), but would anyone like to share and explain their methods of controlling the driving of the robot? I'm really curious what you guys did.

These are the things we tried (I'll share the code when I get it)...

1. Double Joystick: very hard to control. We tried a lot to make it more controlable, but it never worked out well.

2. Single Joystick 1: One speed, 4 ways of moving robot. Push the joystick up and it moves forward. Push it down it moves backwards. Left it turns a bit left and right it turns a bit right.

3. Other single joystick controlls: We made a few other single joystick control systems. One we used in the competition.

I apologize in advance if broke some sort of rule

These are all acceptable in competition and here.

Most teams use the double-stick method. Some use single. Others have been known to use the following:

• DDR pad
• Steering wheel
• R/C controller
• Game controller of some form

[Herodotus]

My favorite form of driving the base of the robot so far has been double joysticks, because it gives a great deal of control, in my opinion. This year, however, we went with a single joystick with the idea that it would leave my other hand free for some push button semi-automatic controls such as u-turns and lane shifting. That hasn't panned out (yet) but with a little bit of work we've gotten our controls working decently well, the single joystick needs a little more tweaking than dual joysticks.

Our joystick itself was fairly unique though(one of a kind as far as I know), what with being a weighted companion cube.

[Grant Cox]

My personal favorite is a PS2 controller with the USB chicklet. The two analog sticks act the same as joysticks, but it just feels a lot more natural and allows you to have more control than sticks (imo).

[fimmel]

we attempted a mechanum drive this year but never got the strafing to work right. but we had forward backward on the left y axis and left / right steering on the right x axis (along with strafing on the left x axis but that didn't work like i said) and it made it very easy to drive strait since you could tweak the direction with your right hand and just keep ur left at the speed you like.

i recommend people try this cause its nice and very intuitive

...forest

[lukevanoort]

We do it like one-stick but we split the x and y axis out onto different joysticks (kind of like Halo). This makes it really easy to drive dead straight (just let go of the turning joystick), gives a bit finer "feel" to the controls than one-stick, and is much more intuitive than tank drive. We have tried other methods, and some of our members prefer to drive tank-style; however, myself and last year's driver both found Halo-style to be the best compromise, so that is what we've used.

[AmoryG]

Well, one of the reasons why I as the driver (and I think most of my team) didn't like the tank control/duel joystick was partially because our robot was so powerful. The gearing ratio made it so actually stearing the it was one thing, but making it turn gradually and not suddenly turn around in a great circle was another thing. We tried all different things with the programming, but it never worked as well as we hoped. I eventually came up with a system that I used in the competition. The results were the best I could hope for. When you turned the joystick to the top left hand corner, it made a nice curve and just by turning it a bit, I could change the turning direction so if there were robots in the way I could easily menuver around them.

When we first entered the competition we only used 1/4th the power our robot was capable of. Because the rug made it so the robot was slower but a lot more controllable we upped it to 1/2 the power and added a turbo trigger. If the joystick is in a certain area the robot will automatically go straight at max speed. I think I could bring up the code, I have it on my computer somewhere....

[mluckham]

We do it like one-stick but we split the x and y axis out onto different joysticks (kind of like Halo)

Nice! Like Mode 1 in Radio Control airplane transmitters (one stick rudder, one stick elevator), versus Mode 2 (single-stick). I'm gonna have the guys try that, next year.

[Battering_Ram]

I have been driving two years (171) and we have had tank drive both years. I really like this because it isolates the two sides of bot. But I will admit that I want to try the halo style so i will email my programmer right away. In my opinion I believe the one joystick is cramming to much onto one contoller, I'd rather isolate and have more precision(imo). But variety is the spice of life so I think its great how everyone does something different.

[Racer26]

I suspect you had trouble with twin stick control because you did not map the values to a cubic curve to desensitize it.

[Jimmy Cao]

We do something rather unique to our drive system.

There are two joysticks. On one of them, we use both axis. The X axis translates the robot left and right, and the Y axis translates the robot forwards and backwards.

We only use one axis on the other joystick. This joystick is responsible for the rotation of the robot. By using both sticks together, the software places an imaginary point in space that the robot "rotates" around. However, this control system only works on an omni directional drive system.

[BigJ]

For our mecanum setup, we used one stick for all translation (sliding while facing same way, includes forwards/backwards) and another stick for the rotation on the X-axis.

The drivers had different preferences as to which side they were on so they were interchangeable.

[jester_assault]

For our Mecanum drive system, 357 uses a 3-axis joystick. The X axis and the Y axis are used for forward/backward/ and translation motions, while the Z axis is used for spin. In the past we used a 2 axis joystick and isolated translational movement to only occur when the drive held the trigger of the joystick.

[matt.winkler]

Originally Posted by Battering_Ram

I have been driving two years (171) and we have had tank drive both years. I really like this because it isolates the two sides of bot. But I will admit that I want to try the halo style so i will email my programmer right away. In my opinion I believe the one joystick is cramming to much onto one contoller, I'd rather isolate and have more precision(imo). But variety is the spice of life so I think its great how everyone does something different.

I have been involved on team 171 since the 1998 build season and to my knowledge, we have always done two independent joysticks with skid steer/tank style control. We have always had 2 operators. One operator is in sole control of driving and the second operator is in control of nearly all motor functions of the robot. I know that this can be tougher for some teams, but if your operators are in tune with each other, this can prove to be very efficient. It allows each of the operators to focus on a specific area of the competition and it removes some delays that may happen with other control styles.

Please keep in mind that I am not intending to bash any single joystick control system or any other very innovative control systems. I am only stating how we have done our robots in the past and the reasons behind our choices.

[usbcd36]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

We do it like one-stick but we split the x and y axis out onto different joysticks (kind of like Halo). This makes it really easy to drive dead straight (just let go of the turning joystick), gives a bit finer "feel" to the controls than one-stick, and is much more intuitive than tank drive. We have tried other methods, and some of our members prefer to drive tank-style; however, myself and last year's driver both found Halo-style to be the best compromise, so that is what we've used.

That's what we did this year too. A lot of the potential drivers hated the system, but they didn't show up to most of the driving practices, so I never changed it, and drove myself. The other nice thing about using this system was that I could use the Y-axis joystick with my left hand and grab it near the bottom (since it's a right-handed stick anyway), then use my left hand for the buttons and the desensitized X-axis (since we didn't need the power spin).