Programming teams

[RoBoTiCxLiNk]

If posting in a forum is too daunting for people, I set up a small little survey people can fill out about their programming team... You know, if they want to...

EDIT: forgot the link: https://spreadsheets0.google.com/emb...xxOFM0Y nc6MQ

[notmattlythgoe]

We usually have 4 programmers on the subteam and 2 mentors. If your team has the funds to spare to get a second cRio I highly suggest it. Not only can you continue to program while the mechanical teams are working, but after the robot ships you still have something to work with.

[Egg 3141592654]

One of these threads...

Our team is always short programmers.For the first time in over 4 years, we had another programmer besides myself on the team that co-programmed the robot with me. Granted we always have 4 programmers beginning every year, the other three usually give up after the third day and switch to assembly.

[cybiko123]

We have three programmers and a couple mentors, but the mentors are usually busy with other subteams. We're using SVN for version control.

[Robby Unruh]

I'm the only one, but we do have an underclassman "in training".

[Owen Meaker]

Currently I am the only programmer for the past two years (we were a rookie team last year). However, after the competition I will train a junior before I graduate so our team isn't at a disadvantage next year. After a flash drive problem a week ago, I have switched the code to a dropbox folder, which should provide collaboration for the future.

I have typically had around a week to program the robot before ship date, so I can get most of the code working, and tweak it before competition. But as I like to say, Thursday is first day of competition AKA last build day AKA first day programmers have time with the robot.

[plnyyanks]

We have two programmers and one mentor who doesn't show up as much as he used to. Needless to say, we're relatively self sufficient. Thankfully, we both know what we're doing and don't need too much guidance. For collaboration, we usually just use a flash drive/email.

[MathFreak]

We have 2 Programmers (a grade 11 guy and me) and 1 coolest mentor.
We usually see in person, but when we need to talk, we chat on Skype or email.

[kenavt]

On Team 2337, we have three people who know programming. There is the main programmer, our pneumatics expert who primarily does programming but not as much as the first guy, and myself, who is basically in-training. (3)

There is another person who primarily does the electrical systems, but the three of us chip in when necessary because two of us started with electrical systems, and then moved on to programming. When the electrical board has to physically be put together, many people from the mechanical and off-robot sections help. (1+)

For mentors, we have two former team members in college, both of whom do programming and electrical work. They rarely come, however, because they are rarely needed. We used to have a professional mentor, but he had to quit do to job demands. (2)

On our team, we find this is enough to get things done. We could automate more things, or make our autonomous programs more complex, but we are adequate for the moment.

At the moment, we don't have a collaboration system set up, other than passing around files on flash drives. Dropbox has been discussed, but not yet implemented.

[demosthenes2k8]

Our team has 10 people with programming knowledge who actually have written something on the robot. We manage our team through the use of Google Code, which, in addition to storing our Mercurial repository, allows us to make Wiki pages with documentation and information, and Issues to keep track of who is assigned which tasks and their status.
We share code using that repository, or simply HG Pull from each other with an ethernet cable.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by RoBoTiCxLiNk

I probably shouldn't keep responding to people's posts but this has happened to me both years i've programmed. Last year was worse though, for breakaway, we literally finished building the robot AT the regional. And our programming team can't make demands such as robot completion dates, 1 person vs. an entire team of builders doesnt go over to well. I'm content with occasionally using the robots chassis for motor testing and et cetera, but the other 99% of the time I'm just experimenting with sensor algorithms and new driver stations and systems. If i had the robot 2 weeks prior to ship i could have a flawless auton. but the bot would be less than flawless so i let them take care of that. And its always the same nagging with getting it to work as soon as theyre done, dont you love it

On behalf of that mechanical part of the team - we're sorry. I used to be a programmer in competition, and it sucks getting the robot with 6 hours, or less, to code it.

One solution I've seen done before is a virtual robot model, but I have no idea how that works. Could someone explain that to me?

[Alex.Norton]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

One solution I've seen done before is a virtual robot model, but I have no idea how that works. Could someone explain that to me?

The entire idea is to create a piece of software that pretends to be the robot and will hopefully respond correctly when the robot controls are activated. The problems that you run into doing this on a first bot is that an accurate physics model is needed for a lot of the debugging. I'm not completely sure, but I think labview has something that can do this type of accurate physics modelling.

For example if you wanted to program a closed loop control of an arm, one would need a full model of the arm, the gearbox with accurate efficiency losses and a very accurate model of how the motor responds to different voltages and currents.

If you want an analogous example, I use a virtual machine to do all of my programming. This is a piece of software that runs another operating system inside of mine, and this second operating system has no idea that it isn't running on real hardware. Same basic idea since the robot code should have no idea that it isn't running on a real robot since the virtual one should ideally respond identically. The virtual machine that I do my coding in has the advantage that all network and graphics drivers are automatically supported and I don't have to worry about browsing the net since there is no way to harm the base operating system. Similarly with the robot, you can't hurt the robot while your doing your basic testing. It is much safer to watch a virtual robot run into the wall instead of the actual robot (after all, electrons do so much less damage when they hit things )

[Kyoshirin]

We have One main programmer, two people who can program but not as adeptly (myself included), and two underclassmen that are learning it at the moment. And zero programmer mentors.
Normally we build the program as we put parts on the robot, so we can test the program as we go. Unfortunately, that always leaves us no time to make and/or test autonomous.

[MagiChau]

We have 6 programmers including myself that also have some expertise in electrical. We have a mentor able to guide us along especially when we have no idea what we are doing.

[davidthefat]

1 person with 8 years of programming experience, another with 6 years(me), and I am not sure about the third one, but he is one brilliant fellow. There are the other stragglers that really never did anything at all.

I will be training up 3 freshmen, we will actually have female programmers next year .