Who used IR this year?

[Marc P.]

I'm curious to see how many teams ended up using the Infra-Red trackers this season, particularly at the Championship. Team 38 had some working prototypes, but never implemented anything as far as autonomous mode, and ultimately removed the trackers at the UTC regional.

What future uses does everyone see for IR, and what importance do you think it will have in future competitions?

[pi_guy578]

We weren't at the championship this year but we did successfully implement IR sensors this year. It worked very well. We had the robot move forward until it saw IR beacon, turned approx 90 degrees using a yaw-rate sensor and moved forward until it knocked off the ball. We also used a camcorder to record autonomous mode during our mathces to take back to the laptop for debugging, which really helped.

[TD78]

Several team members worked very hard on an IR device and by the end of build season had a working prototype. But our robot had neither the space nor the weight (even though the assembly was very light) to hold it. I hope we can possibily implement it into this year's robot just to see it how well it would work during autonomous or uses for it during a match.

In the future I would like to see it worked into games in some way or another. I think it provides an interesting aspect that is both challenging and unique. It appeared to me that a few teams developed working models so I think using it in next year's game would be feasible. Fine tuning though might be in order as ours needed a bit of tweaking.

[Steve W]

Team 188 had a program that was to lock onto the 2 IR beacons and do look up tables. We could also have the robot follow us around on the field staying 3 feet away. However on the real fields we could not make it work. There was no opportunity at the regionals to debug on the field and the amount of reflections from the field was huge. We tried at 1 regional but after I checked the readings at 2 other regionals I was volunteering at we decided to scrap the sensors.

What will we see next year? I believe that they will attempt to make it harder not to use them. FIRST will however have to do a tougher testing to find out if what they ask is possible. I was told that there was testing done this year but I am not sure to what extent. If it were up to me, let's give it another try with a few modifications on the field. I believe that if there were only 5 becons instead of 7 and that there was a backing on the beacons that did not reflect things would work a lot better. Just my 2 cents and no I don't give change.

EDIT : What I think might be cool is a goal or item that could be placed anywhere on the field by the opposing alliance. This goal would have an IR beacon that you would need to find in auton mode. BIG bonus points for retreiving said goal.

[mtrawls]

Team 122 used the IR sensors quite successfully this year ... the IR sensors never really caused us problems, we were lined up every time, but from time to time our pots would malfunction, which is what we depended on to knock the ball down (we had quite an elaborate procedure due to space, actually). I don't know what future IR will have... but odds are it'll be a pretty big role in next year's game. So far as reflections, and FIRST needing to do more testing, I don't know about this. A lot, I think, depends on how you house the IR sensors, making sure internal reflection and viewing angle is minimized -- I don't think the original setup with the heat shrink will cut it. Though for more complicated things, I suppose, more precision will be required. Though we never had any problems, we also designed our system so it didn't have to be real precise.

[sudeepr71]

Team 503 used the banner sensors to follow the line to the ball. It worked very well after we got it adjusted to the correct speeds. We did not even consider the IR sensor as an option. And luckly we didn't b/c we were very very close to 130.

[Steve W]

Our sensors were shielded and worked perfectly on our practice field. At the different regionals I was at I used the IR tester that was at each event to prove that the field beacons worked. By turning the sensor around you could see were the different beams were coming from. I could get readings from both sides when facing away from the beacons. There were times were I could pick up the beacon behind me but not the one in front. The people testing with me were slightly baffled so I am not sure on how they did their initial tests.

[Greg Young]

We had an IR system to get us to the 10 pt ball, with a sensor on one wheel as a backup distance counter. We didn't use it much because there were usually other things we needed to do during autonomous. I think we used that mode three times at Championships and it worked properly twice.

They keep telling us that IR will be important next year, so development of a good IR system is a big summer project this year. The sensors in the kit were designed for remote control of consumer electronics, so they are designed to convert any signal above the detection limit into digits for the TV. To deal with an environment where signal strength matters for finding the beacon rather than a reflection, we need an analog output from our detector.

Does anyone know of a detector that has the amplification, agc, and demodulation of the kit sensor but produces an analog output proportional to the strength of the IR input? I'd prefer to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Thanks,

Greg

[Gabe Salas Jr.]

We wanted to use the IR sensors on our robot for this year, to make autonomous a little bit easier. We got them to work on our robot, but there was a high percentage (about fifty percent) that the robot will not "see" the beacon. Maybe we were going too fast and the sensors did not see the beacon. Who knows, because we have worked five weeks on the programming to get the IR sensors to work, and ended up not using them.