Rockwell Innovation in Control

[EricH]

In 2015, we autostacked totes. From detection to waiting for the next tote to come in was pretty much completely automatic, and we had one more tote in the stack when the next one slid down.

[mman1506]

We won it in 2015 for optimized autostacking. We had two IR sensors, one two slow down the intakes once the robot had grabbed the totes to prevent bounce back and another one to sequence the totes.

[Liam Fay]

From what I understand as a non-programmer - the 2485 2015 robot, Valkyrie used the vertical angle of our strongback as feedback to a PID controlling a motor to keep it vertical while the robot went over things.

[dellagd]

In 2016, we won it for-

• Intricate autonomous modes
• Trajectory planning
  • Live setpoint-actual graph for tuning PIDVA loops
  • Both drivetrain and arm motion profiled
• High level of autonomous function
  • Same vision tracking used throughout match
  • Driver instructs robot what to do, not how to do it. Shooter arm is all autonomous, from angle to reloading. The copilot just says to aim and if it is good to shoot.

In 2014, we won it for (starting to forget ):

• Robust software that actually accounted for mechanical failures and could be enabled to adapt in such a case
• Two ball autonomous
• Intelligent robot lighting (using a small coprocessor to drive them) that would alert the driver to robot conditions

In 2013, we won it for (don't remember much ):

• Anti-tip code on a robot that needed to be tippy for our climbing strategy
• Good autonomous mode?

And every year, regardless of the robot, we won awards because our students could convey the robot's functions with clarity and enthusiasm. If you can be really excited about what your robot can do, odds are the judges will too.

[BenjiSG]

We won it this year at the Boston District Qualifier and the New England District Championship for our extremely consistent autonomous and automated vision shooting. Our lead programmer put in a ridiculous amount of work in making sure that our vision tracking (new for the team this year) allowed to consistently make shots anywhere from 4 to 10 feet out.

It also helped that we produced flyers with a write-up of many of the components of our control system, and handed them out to judges who stopped by our pit (see attached PDF).