Autonomous Coordinating/Timing

[bhaidet]

I imagine that the autonomous periods this year will look like a game of knockout, where all the teams fire at the same basket at the same time and none go in because they hit each other. I know that there were standards for minibot-holding last year and I was hoping to start something similar with autonomous scoring.

Analog (with more flexibility):
Each team has a timer (trimpot) on their robot to say when their robot starts firing.

Digital (and more standard):
Each team can begin firing either immediately, in 5 seconds, or in 10 seconds.


The analog method is better for alliances with teams that take more or far less than 5 seconds to throw, but the digital method would be really easy for everyone to implement in the exact same way. What do you think?

[CompSciGeek]

That sounds like a good idea, but what if you just used Kinect? Like whenever you do the motion, it'll shoot

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by CompSciGeek

That sounds like a good idea, but what if you just used Kinect? Like whenever you do the motion, it'll shoot

That will help somewhat, allowing the Kinect user to determine when their shots are fired, but that still leaves two robots that potentially could have conflicting autonomous modes. Remember, there is only one Kinect per alliance, its optional, and which team uses it is for the alliance itself to determine.

[bhaidet]

yah - the kinect might help if a team wants to gather the balls another robot is not going to shoot, but if you have three shooters, as is likely in the finals, the kinect becomes less useful and the hybrid mode turns more into autonomous mode.

[Mik_951]

Originally Posted by stevend1994

''there is only one Kinect per alliance''

Do anybody know why there's one Kinect per alliance?

[mathking]

I think that it would be easier for teams to just implement a delay in their routines that can be changed on the classmate. If you can all set a delay of 0 to x seconds, and know about how long it takes to you to shoot two balls, then you should be able to not interfere with teammates timing wise.

I think that a bigger problem may be teams that are only able to score high from one distance straight on in autonomous. Two such teams on one alliance is a problem. We have already talked about designs that could start directly behind a 60" robot (but still touch the key) and score high or start in front to score and then move out of the way. But we also want to be able to shoot at the middle baskets in autonomous.

[mesamb1]

Originally Posted by Mik_951

Do anybody know why there's one Kinect per alliance?

Alot of teams I would imagine are not going to use them. If they are, I would recomend they have a switch box to set the mode for autonomous(0 sec shoot, 5 sec. shoot, kinect mode ect.)

Our robot will be using a box like this to set what routine it will runs to acomidate things like 60'' robots infront of us, and our alliance timing when we set it on the field. Our kinect mode will involve a short on field dance