A Reminder of Simplicity

[LauraN]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

where do you get a fresh battery from in every match of the elimination rounds? they take about an hour to recharge after a tough match and they only gave us two batterys?!

We have all kinds of batteries from previous years. We bring a cart with about 8 batteries and at least one (maybe two, not sure) charger(s). The biggest challenge is keeping them organized into which are charged and which aren't.

Although I do agree that dead reckoning has serious drawbacks. Feedback is important.

Something of a hybrid could work. Our team had light sensors mounted facing our wheels. Weglued circles to our wheels that each had about 100 black and white stripes. The light sensors gave us feedback on the transitions between white and black as the wheels spun and gave us accruate wheel counts that we used to drive straight. (Our drive train was...not cooperating and veered to the left in autonomous when told to go straight).

Although we didn't use it to attempt to hit the 10 point ball, you could use these wheel counters to tell you exactly how many revolutions you've made at any point in time, and if you know the circumference of your wheels and the distances on the field, you could do some pseudo-dead reckoning with feedback. =)

I think that would be the best solution for a lot of teams who, like ours, may have had trouble with designing a system for using the IR beacons. The wheel counters were easy(ier?) to work with and could give you feedback.

Because a robot without feedback is a robot out of control. =)

(Our team didn't have any actual physical mechanism on the robot that would have been able to knock off the 10 point ball, in case you were wondering why we never tried. That and I just thought of this idea while writing this post. )