5817 Pre-Champs Recap/Preview Video

[steelerborn]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I don't mean to take anything away from this great robot, but shining a UV light to target the high goal is a huge safety hazard. Even at low intensities, UV light can lead to skin and vision damage, and you're shining that light in a direction where opposing drive teams will be exposed to it. At the very least, make it very clear to your inspectors that you are using an ultraviolet light so they can make a proper determination of its safety.

At the intensity and wavelength we are running at the lights won't harm the opposing drivers. UV light gets a bad rep but it is used in a lot of applications, pretty sure there are a lot of people who go to nail salons which use UV light to dry nail polish.

The shot that we like to take (outerworks from the low bar) had issues because at our previous events there was a spotlight usually right near where we wanted to shoot, so our camera tracking wouldn't work. We could get it to work 100% on the middle goal near the middle of the field, but the bot was not designed to shoot from there. We wanted quick cycles.

We have a mentor who works in the frunit processing industry and knows a lot about UV light and vision systems that they use on fruit sizing and elimination equipment. Spotlights and other light sources don't emit much uv light at the wavelengths we are using, so the goals stand out like a sore thumb no matter what.