A Simple Improvement to Driving

[generalbrando]

[quote=Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by generalbrando

This may be common knowledge, but I couldn't find it searching, so I post away.



Those two averages will be 1/4 way from the original values toward the other joy stick. The result, if you can visualize, is that if you push both sticks forward, but you don't do it in perfect sync, the program will minimize the difference and the robot will go straight forward instead of swerving a lot.

For the techies:
pwm01=(p1_y+((p1_y+p2_y)/2)/2)
pwm02=(p2_y+((p1_y+p2_y)/2)/2)

I have not seen this posted before but have not looked at drive algorithms much in the past. I appretiated your program line codes as the paragraph description then made sense.

Question: What is the result with one stick full forward and the other full reverse? Does it still do a zero degree spin albeit just slower? The spin factor in a traditional tank steer is where a lot of loss of control causes problems. The other being the swerving during a forward motion that you mentioned.

Checking my logic, both sticks in maximum deflection in the same direction results in the averages being the actual stick positions??


Thanks for posting,

APS

Well if you work through the math, it should be 0 and 256 averaged=128. Then average between that and the originals...64 and 194. Technically 127 is center (right?) so that's a tiny bit off, but the results is a slower spin. I thought there might be a quirk where I would need to handle an exception for such a thing like this, but in testing, I found it works fine all around.

Am I making sense? (it's 1am and my brain took the weekend off several hours ago).