We did gloves FIRST?

[rufu5]

Hello, I am Rufus Cochran (rufu5), the electronics team leader for Team Roboto 447. Last season my mentor and I conceived, designed, and built our gloves or "virtural joystics" and won- 2003-MidwestRegional-Xerox Creativity Award, 2003-St.Louis Regional-Leadership in Controls Award, 2003-IRI-Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology Award. This system completely replaced joysticks for our driver controls. This year, I designed and built optical joysticks which use a glove that has a high intensity LED on it to control our arm (full precision control that acts like a sensitive joystick)
During the Great Lakes Regional, our team passed out stickers which said "We did gloves FIRST" (which I designed and used as a nice little pun). Two of my fellow students later reported that they were rudely told by two other teams that we were lying and that their teams had done gloves first
I am not doubting anyone, I would just like to know what they are talking about I am only a Sophmore in High School but I have been with my team for 4 years and the only thing close that I have seen was a plastic "hand" that was geared up from a backpack a couple of years ago. I was under the assumption from the judges at Chicago and St.Louis last year that they had not seen anything like this before either. If we did not do "gloves" first, I am truly sorry for unintentionally misrepresenting this. Based on my time with FIRST, and the reaction I got from everyone I showed our "virtural joysticks" to, we thought we were the first team to completely move away from joysticks in driving our robots main drive system and pioneer such a control system. I feel certain that no one has ever attempted anything like our optical joysticks this year (well lol, as of now ).
I would like to know if my light-hearted stickers offended anyone. We will stop giving them out if others have done such a control system before. Again, I am truly sorry about any mix up. I didn't mean to anger anyone with the stickers. We just thought it was something truly original to our team (like wildstang and crabdrive or kokomo and their shifting mechanism from a few years back). I just thought our team could be known for our innovative control systems
Please reply with as much detail as possible so I can know all the facts clearly. I don't want to look stupid spreading false information. I am seriously sorry if I unknowingly made a false statement and feel very bad about even the thought of making such a false statement.

[Joe Ross]

As far as innovations in OI controls, I would guess that you are the first to drive your robot without a joystick of some type (although some teams have used racing wheels in the past). However, you aren't the first to use a glove of any type (but you already know that).

Some notable FIRSTs in OI controls that I know of:

FIRST minature replica arm for control: team 308 in 2000
FIRST glove: 234 in 2001
DDR pads: 2003, sorry don't know the team

Personally, I think your stickers sound cute. If someone were to complain again, I would have your teammates explain why your glove systems are different, and also explain the pun to the humor impaired.

One final note on the judges. They often aren't involved in FIRST for any more time then just the regional they are judging at. Thus they have a very limited realm of which they are aware of. That's one reason why you occasionally see teams get awards for something that's been done many times before, etc.

[edomus]

does anyone have pictures of any of these?

[Heretic121]

ddr pads for contorlers!?!? I NEED TO SEE THIS!!! if anyone has pictures of any and all of the discussed controlers (including 447's) that would be great to see =D

(btw yes 121 used a driving whell in the past and im sure others have too)

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

As far as innovations in OI controls, I would guess that you are the first to drive your robot without a joystick of some type (although some teams have used racing wheels in the past). However, you aren't the first to use a glove of any type (but you already know that).

We used a steering wheel and throttle stick in 2001.

At least I think it was 2001...

Wetzel

[Joe Ross]

The DDR pad was at the cleveland regional in 2003. Sorry, don't have any pictures, and AFAIK, there aren't any on chiefdelphi.

Jim Gold tells me that someone had a playstation controller in 2002.

Jeff, I don't consider using an off the shelf wheel to be an innovation, although it is really neat.

If you search the threads here on chiefdelphi and the image galleries, you should be able to find pictures of 308's miniature arm and 234's glove at a minimum.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

As far as innovations in OI controls, I would guess that you are the first to drive your robot without a joystick of some type (although some teams have used racing wheels in the past). However, you aren't the first to use a glove of any type (but you already know that).

Some notable FIRSTs in OI controls that I know of:

FIRST minature replica arm for control: team 308 in 2000
FIRST glove: 234 in 2001
DDR pads: 2003, sorry don't know the team

Team 115 built a miniature replica arm for their control system back in 1999 (they may also have built one in 1998, but I don't remember for sure - Steve Rock will know).

There was a team that built a set of exoskeleton-based glvoes for their entire control interface (including driving) in 1998. I don't remember the team number off the top of my head, but I will look it up and see if I can find the old photos.

-dave

[rufu5]

FIRST glove: 234 in 2001

I have never heard of these, do you have a pic? Also as soon as I get a pic of our gloves from our team leader I will post it (and one of our optical joysticks, which are way out there lol).

One of the students said that a parent from the TechnoKats said they did a glove control in 99, does anyone know about those or have a pic?

Thanks for the replys!

[Gadget470]

The above is me explaining the gloves team 470 created for the 2003 competition. These won Leadership in Control at GLR that year. However, 470 originally developed a glove system which was unveiled at the 2002 West Michigan competition. In 2003, the students of the electronics team redesigned the gloves for added comfort and more of a One-Size-Fits-Most approach.

[rufu5]

470 originally developed a glove system

What did this "glove system" include? I saw one team at nationals last year who had gloves but all they included were simple push buttons in gloves (that is seriously not meant to be mean im just trying to explain what they were to the best of my memory).

If you quote a control system please try to describe them clearly (not just "a team a few years ago did gloves that did stuff"). Thanks! (i dont mean to sound rude I just want to know what people are talking about, sorry)

[Gadget470]

470's gloves last year were to control our wings.

They were actuated pneumatically.

As to the gloves themselves, there were reed switches in each of the 8 fingers, and a magnet in each thumb. When the thumb was near enough (pinch-motion) to a specific finger, the switch would engage. Inside the programming, the switches were basically like normal on off switches.
Left-Index: Left Wing down
Left-Mid: Left Wing up
Right Index.. yeah

There was the option for expandiability, but it wasn't needed. Could they drive the robot and operate the wings? Yes, but we preferred a joystick to drive and glove for pneumatics.

If you want more information, I will give you the contact of the student designer.

[rufu5]

Thanks!
Also, you said you did a glove system not last year but the year before, what did they do? Just wondering.

[MissAbi]

For the first year, the gloves also controlled pnuematics on the robot. Our 2002 robot began in a vertical position (the wheels weren't touching the ground). So the gloves controlled the knock-over and shock mechsnisms, as well as the grip and release for our goal-grabber.

[rufu5]

Awsome, Thanks. So im right in understanding that your gloves did not drive your robot. (Now I see that my stickers were not accurate, I should have done more research, our gloves (lol as I know so far) were the first to be used to drive a robot, but not the first glove based control system in a generic sense).

Thanks for your feed back, I would still like to hear about other teams who have used glove systems previous to the 2003 season

[bigqueue]

Originally Posted by rufu5

Hello, I am Rufus Cochran (rufu5), the electronics team leader for Team Roboto 447. Last season my mentor and I conceived, designed, and built our gloves or "virtural joystics" and won- 2003-MidwestRegional-Xerox Creativity Award, 2003-St.Louis Regional-Leadership in Controls Award, 2003-IRI-Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology Award. This system completely replaced joysticks for our driver controls. This year, I designed and built optical joysticks which use a glove that has a high intensity LED on it to control our arm (full precision control that acts like a sensitive joystick)
During the Great Lakes Regional, our team passed out stickers which said "We did gloves FIRST" (which I designed and used as a nice little pun). Two of my fellow students later reported that they were rudely told by two other teams that we were lying and that their teams had done gloves first
I am not doubting anyone, I would just like to know what they are talking about I am only a Sophmore in High School but I have been with my team for 4 years and the only thing close that I have seen was a plastic "hand" that was geared up from a backpack a couple of years ago. I was under the assumption from the judges at Chicago and St.Louis last year that they had not seen anything like this before either. If we did not do "gloves" first, I am truly sorry for unintentionally misrepresenting this. Based on my time with FIRST, and the reaction I got from everyone I showed our "virtural joysticks" to, we thought we were the first team to completely move away from joysticks in driving our robots main drive system and pioneer such a control system. I feel certain that no one has ever attempted anything like our optical joysticks this year (well lol, as of now ).
I would like to know if my light-hearted stickers offended anyone. We will stop giving them out if others have done such a control system before. Again, I am truly sorry about any mix up. I didn't mean to anger anyone with the stickers. We just thought it was something truly original to our team (like wildstang and crabdrive or kokomo and their shifting mechanism from a few years back). I just thought our team could be known for our innovative control systems
Please reply with as much detail as possible so I can know all the facts clearly. I don't want to look stupid spreading false information. I am seriously sorry if I unknowingly made a false statement and feel very bad about even the thought of making such a false statement.

This might be slightly off topic, but how do you use the gloves at the start of the match?

That is, it is my understanding that we can not be touching the control system during autonomous mode.....does that mean that you have the gloves off that that point and then run up and put them on, or are they on, with a simple connector interface that gets plugged in when driver mode begins?

I'm just curious how you handled this sort of stuff.

Thanks,
-Quentin