Has anyone ever used a Computer Mouse to locate themselves on the field

[rahilm]

Originally Posted by EricH

<R02-D> prohibits any device with an exposed laser. I highly doubt that you could argue that the mouse's optics are not exposed.

BTW, a number of teams use accelerometers without any problems. Gravity is either accounted for or ignored, but the accelerometers are reasonable in cost and complexity.

Using accelerometers to yield position though would be fairly inaccurate. Integrating once to get velocity shouldn't be too bad, but the second integration won't be too accurate, especially considering that you're going to be 1 processor cycle behind (time wise) on position.

Edit: This is what I mean by being 1 processor cycle behind. To integrate, you basically have to use Reimann sums in this case. For best accuracy, you'd want trapezoidal sums, so for 1 position value, you need 2 velocity values, so 3 acceleration values. This means you'd have to integrate acceleration for 2 cycles to get the two velocity values required for a single position value, putting you 1 cycle behind realtime.