FTC - Robot Signals During Autonomous

[Wayne TenBrink]

I know that FTC isn't FRC, but the following Q&A was posted tonight. It directly contradicts a similar FRC Q&A from Aerial Assist:

Q: Hello, We had a question concerning the strategy. Would it be legal to have a sensor on our robot that in autonomous we would show it a card and it would run a certain autonomous program depending on which card we show it. Would this be considered legal since it is still being operated be pre-programmed instructions.


A: No. By signaling to the robot a desired action with a colored card, you are controlling the robot and it is no longer autonomous. It is not making its own decisions, you are deciding for it and communicating the decision with a colored card.

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

I know that FTC isn't FRC, but the following Q&A was posted tonight. It directly contradicts a similar FRC Q&A from Aerial Assist:

Q: Hello, We had a question concerning the strategy. Would it be legal to have a sensor on our robot that in autonomous we would show it a card and it would run a certain autonomous program depending on which card we show it. Would this be considered legal since it is still being operated be pre-programmed instructions.


A: No. By signaling to the robot a desired action with a colored card, you are controlling the robot and it is no longer autonomous. It is not making its own decisions, you are deciding for it and communicating the decision with a colored card.

Perhaps this will be the ruling moving forward. While controlling via webcam (FRC) is a cool demonstration of coding prowess, it is by definition teleoperated.

Originally Posted by Rolf Pfeifer

"autonomy means independence of control. This characterization implies that autonomy is a property of the relation between two agents, in the case of robotics, of the relations between the designer and the autonomous robot. Self-sufficiency, situatedness, learning or development, and evolution increase an agent’s degree of autonomy."

[FrankJ]

In 2012 everybody was given Kinects & autonomous was renamed to Hybrid. So skip forward to 2014. The rules did not rule out the use of Kinects during Autonomous. Q&A55 specifically allowed them. That open the door to laptop cameras & so forth during autonomous. I think it was unintended consequences from allowing the kinect to begin with. But I don't speak for or have reliable knowledge for what the GDC is really thinking. We will find out what is legal for 2015 in Jan. No reason to expect consistency game to game on something like this.