Team 935 autonomous testing

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by railerobotics

The rule you are referencing (G28) does say that contact that is deliberate or damaging will be penalized. Excluding damage, there is a gray area of whether or not our contact was deliberate. Is the act of our robot shooting and a defense bot being struck deliberate contact on our part? We would be deliberately shooting the ball, not attempting to contact the defense bot. However I agree, that if we do cause damage we will probably be penalized, however the cylinders pushing out the arms are not forceful in any way. They only have the strength pull the arm in and out. They can be held up with merely an outstretched arm. Thus they will not be damaging unless we hit electronics (which is quite unlikely).

That's good that the mechanism is so forgiving, that should buy you a lot of latitude. I guess the only thing to really worry about is a defender stopping you from opening it in the first place!

[railerobotics]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

That's good that the mechanism is so forgiving, that should buy you a lot of latitude. I guess the only thing to really worry about is a defender stopping you from opening it in the first place!

Yup and only one solution for that.


Practice. Practice. Practice.

[smart1]

wow that's impressive.

[Chadfrom308]

We were also thinking of a 2 mode autonomous mode

Also, is that a Haas CNC machine in the back? Very nice

[railerobotics]

Originally Posted by Chadfrom308

We were also thinking of a 2 mode autonomous mode

Also, is that a Haas CNC machine in the back? Very nice

Yes it is, our team has been very fortunate in our high school partnering with a local community college. Because the community college has machining classes on our campus we are able to take full advantage of two CNC mills and two CNC lathes, as well as a multitude of manual machines. This also allows us to machine out every part of our robot, fixing mistakes as we progress through building it. And trust me, there are A LOT of mistakes. , but that is what robotics is about, learning how to fail, and learning from failing.

[SenorZ]

What about "lit" goal detection? We haven't test (or considered) auto yet, but we're most likely going to have a "wait to shoot" feature to get extra points if our goal isn't lit.

[railerobotics]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

What about "lit" goal detection? We haven't test (or considered) auto yet, but we're most likely going to have a "wait to shoot" feature to get extra points if our goal isn't lit.

We decided the extra 5 points we would get was not worth (most likely) not getting 2 shots off. It was much simpler to just time the program to be sure to get the goal when it is hot at least once. The first shot goes in during the first 3 seconds and the second at 9 seconds. So we will get the hot goal at least once.

[wireties]

Very nice - simple, repeatable, reliable! Do you use a sonar to measure the distance from the wall?

[JohnSchneider]

Good luck this season guys!

[railerobotics]

Originally Posted by wireties

Very nice - simple, repeatable, reliable! Do you use a sonar to measure the distance from the wall?

Nope it is all just dead reckoning. Battery voltage and power levels were initially a concern, but we will have a charged battery on the board each time and even when the voltage did drop the results were not effected negatively.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by railerobotics

Nope it is all just dead reckoning. Battery voltage and power levels were initially a concern, but we will have a charged battery on the board each time and even when the voltage did drop the results were not effected negatively.

Dead reckoning using time as the only feedback?

[railerobotics]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

Dead reckoning using time as the only feedback?

Yup. The plan is to put encoders on eventually, but we could not make the brackets this week and we wanted to test it and get it to work.

[JB987]

Great job guys. Have you considered how much air the multiple cylinders you are using will require and how frequently your compressor will likely need to run if you shoot x number of times per match? Looks like you might need more than 4 accumulators for sure.

[waialua359]

I predict we will see a lot of these type of robots with 2 ball autons with the exception of those that will flip the ball over their head shooters, opposite intake collectors.

[railerobotics]

Originally Posted by JB987

Great job guys. Have you considered how much air the multiple cylinders you are using will require and how frequently your compressor will likely need to run if you shoot x number of times per match? Looks like you might need more than 4 accumulators for sure.

We actually have 7 tucked away on there. we can get about 10 consecutive cycles with no recharge time before we need to stop and wait.