Automatic Shifting Algorithm

[phrontist]

For the purposes of this thread we are assuming that the robot has a four speed transmission.

In 2005 I'd like to have a fully automatic transmission, but I've been struggling with how I'd actually implement this (from an algorithm standpoint).

This is the best I've come up with:

Find max speed robot is capable of in highest gear with full motor power. Call this x. Using banner sensors, the speed of the wheels will be used in the algorithm as a percentage of x. The percentage of joystick input would the correlate directly to the speed of the wheels. The algorithm would increase motor power until reaching the desired wheel speed unless it hits 255 first at which point it would shift up and decrease motor by some given amount calculated ahead of time.

I really have very little idea what I'm doing

How would you do it?