Programmers: I Have A Challenge For You

[gixxy]

Our turret was fairly autonomous this year.

Camera would target goal, find distance and angle from target. Center to Target. Figure out what speed to use on the wheels from calibration points. and we would fire.

Everything else was Operator control: driving, ball collection, hitting the fire button, Bridge mounter.

But man that Turret was a blast to code.

I can't guarantee that we will make fully autonomous robot, but we already try to make the Robot take care of itself as best we can.

[theNerd]

Could we, as an awesome robotics community, create a github for this? Each team could push and pull his or her ideas....creating a truly Graciously professional union between our teams.

[rebug]

Wait, one question:

How in the world are you going to know where other robots are? You could do vision tracking (sound painful, but possible) or use the laser rangefinder that google used (easier to program, harder to build).

Anyway, in my senior year, I would like to do camera tracking for everything, and make it completely autonomous. I hope the game that year is good...

PS: To gixxy: why is Programmer.program() static? are you the only one?

Wow. That sounds both amazing and painful. It's an interesting concept, that's for sure. The main programmer on our team might be up to the challenge (only problem is that he is a senior right now and will only mentor next year). This could be something for our programming team to work on over the summer though.

It would certainly make for an interesting match if all the robots were autonomous, but what would the drivers do? I'm not sure if a fully autonomous robot could pull off a last-second balance or miracle shot like this year. And if a robot this year were autonomous, how would it know when to balance or how to react to defending robots? How would you program it to know the difference between an alliance partner and an opponent?

The human element in matches is important. If an alliance partner needed help (say their robot was tipped over) the fully autonomous robot probably wouldn't help right the other robot. And then there's always some faulty sensor or something. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, I'm saying this would be hard to pull off and still win matches.

Still, I would be absolutely awed if there was a robot next year that had full autonomous and could still win matches.

[shuhao]

I've been pushing for this the entire season.. However our team has no electrical, so I had to take over that part.. Also we don't have the funds to go all out on sensors.. and our mechanical team do not have time to mount an advance sensor system..

It's not entirely impossible. It just takes 1 really good programmer (SLAM, planning, control), a really good machinist (sensor turrents etc.), and a really good electrical guy (sensors, control systems etc.) to work on exclusively the autonomous mode while everyone else works on everything else about the robot and a lot of money to do it.. 6 weeks should be enough. Though it will be pretty difficult to accomplish in the scale of FIRST, as the robots are big and the field are not always the most friendly in terms of localization. The worst part is probably tracking other robots.. Not impossible, but pretty hard as everyone has different dimensions (though bumpers are the same.. hmm)

Me and our main builder (who is probably one of the best machinist I've ever encountered), and an outside friend who's excellent at electrical are starting to do a smaller robot that could do SLAM and auto navigation. We're making the entire robot open source once completed. The current design is approximately 18in x 11in big.

[2185Bilal]

Team 2185 - The RoboRams
Are up for that challenge