Turret

[Garten Haeska]

Is there a way that you could program a turret to aways be looking at the basketball hoops. So no matter where you are on the court you could always have a shot on target without having to worry about moving the turret also, we would impliment the ultrasonic sensor in the KOP to sense how far we are away to get the right amount of power to get the ball to the hoop? Could anyone possibly tell me how to go about doing this in Labview or in any general way including what sensors to use? Other than the sonar detector(ultrasonic) and the vision tracking of a reflective square.

[Sean Raia]

Yes, i worked on this my freshman year (Lunacy). And as long as you set your camera up to recognize those vision targets, getting it to stay on it is not a giant task.

Its late and i dont feel like explaining just how you would do this but its pretty much a loop that rotates the turret until it finds the target, if the target is in view it will center the turret to aim directly at it using smaller rotation increments. You could use your sonar to factor the distance into these segments, but thats your job to figure out :-)

[Garten Haeska]

So all you would need to do is tell it in programming is to only look at the target and never lose track of it? What programming language did you use?

[DjMaddius]

Well, if you know how much power your balls will push thrown at, you can calculate the angle to set the launcher based on the camera tracking software. The example rectangle tracking LabVIEW software gives you distance so I personally don't believe that you don't need the ultrasonic detector.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Garten Haeska

Is there a way that you could program a turret to aways be looking at the basketball hoops. So no matter where you are on the court you could always have a shot on target without having to worry about moving the turret also, we would impliment the ultrasonic sensor in the KOP to sense how far we are away to get the right amount of power to get the ball to the hoop? Could anyone possibly tell me how to go about doing this in Labview or in any general way including what sensors to use? Other than the sonar detector(ultrasonic) and the vision tracking of a reflective square.

What I am going to do is use a gyro. Have the robot face the baskets at the beginning of the match and keep tracking it.

[Sean Raia]

I did this in LABview, but havent touched it since. Weve since moved on to Java and never looked back.

[Garten Haeska]

Originally Posted by Sean Raia

I did this in LABview, but havent touched it since. Weve since moved on to Java and never looked back.

Do you still have the file, if so would you mind letting me have a look at it, im still fairly new to Labview, i had two years of Java, so its all very strange, but yet very visual.

[Garten Haeska]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

What I am going to do is use a gyro. Have the robot face the baskets at the beginning of the match and keep tracking it.

David, are you using Java this year again (i believe you helped me last year with it) or are you using labview?

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Garten Haeska

David, are you using Java this year again (i believe you helped me last year with it) or are you using labview?

Java. So essentially, it is a dead reckoning method. You keep track of the absolute angle by integrating the Angular Velocity given by the Gyro (Most Gyros give angular velocity) You will be good to go. If it drifts off, just get in the middle and "zero" it out.