Kinect in Hybrid Mode

[Joon Park]

I was at FRC Live! with Bill Miller during champs, and he seemed to put a very, very big emphasis on the fact that teams should not put away their kinects, but instead should play around with it during the off-season. I have a feeling we're going to see a more prominent use of the Kinect, perhaps even during teleop rather than autonomous.

[gyroscopeRaptor]

Our original Kinect system had only two arms to control every function of our robot. The range of each arm rotated vertically would be put into different "zones", and the left arm would select what mechanism would be controlled. The right arm would then control it, such as putting the catapult up or down and reloading. It was the best Kinect at North Star.

From the way Bill said it during FRC Live! it seems it would still be restricted to hybrid, but the hybrid would be set up so on-the-fly action would be required. Think 2006/2009 autonomous, where every robot gets into a giant mess in the center. On the fly control would have made those auto periods more interesting. I doubt Kinect would be used during teleop or endgame.

[Joon Park]

Maybe we'll see a Kinect installed into each driver station? That'll allow each team, not each alliance, to be able to use the Kinect during hybrid.