Autonomous Fail-safe switch

[pabigfe97]

Hello All!

As an auto routine, I would like to include an Autonomous Fail-Safe Switch so that the robot doesn't break when an unexpected event occurs.

The language I am using is Labview and I'm not sure where to begin...

Thanks in advance for your help,

Pablo

[Woolly]

There's about a million ways to do what you're saying...
The first thing that comes to mind is putting a Kinect on your driver station and making one of the drivers hold up a fist (all finger buttons pressed) to allow autonomous to keep running.
Otherwise, if it's a drive situation you're worried about, and you have encoders on your drivetrain, you could put in a condition such that if you're applying more than say 30% power to your motors and you're not moving, that it assumes the motors are stalled and kills autonomous (or you could use this same condition to see when you've run into the 10-pt goal)

But yeah, if your autonomous is inside a large while loop, you could make it so that any number of conditions can force autonomous to stop running.

[m1tche11d]

Basically, you want to do a few things.

1. Define what "normal" operation is.
2. Set up some way to detect whether or not you are in "normal" operation. (sensors, yay!)
3. If you are operating normally, great! If you aren't operating normally, then stop the robot.

It's really up to you to decide what your robot's operating bounds are going to be. Once you know this, then you will be able to solve this problem better. Sensors are fantastic and can be used in a variety of ways.

Generally, when we have designed fail-safes on our robot, we have gone with the same sensors:

Limit switches to detect physical movement too far in some direction.
Temp reading on the KOP gyroscope to detect parts that are too hot.
Accelerometer to determine whether or not the robot is upright.

Hope this helps!