Need for some official DEFINITIONS

[dhitchco]

The following terms are not "officially" defined in the "definitions" section (4.2.1) of the manual; namely they don't appear in BOLDFACE and ALL CAPS. These terms could use some official definitions since there is some ambiguity as brought out in this forum in several threads:

1) What defines "DISABLED". This particularly applies to what the robot's on-board system is capable of doing by itself when the driver's controls are "disabled" by the step pad, the referee, etc. Examples of this involve the robot pre-screening and viewing the field BEFORE the game starts as the visual tetras are randomly placed and/or during the game if the robot is somehow temporarily "disabled" from driving. Smarter robots will be able to do a lot of on-board processing while supposedly being disabled. ref 3.4.3 and 4.3.2

2) What defines "ACTIVATED". As called out in 4.2.2, it discusses "activation" of the driver control stations. This ties to point #1 above about being TOTALLY disabled.

3) What officially defines "ENABLES OPERATIONS". As called out in 3.4.3, this refers to the status of the robot while the human player steps off of the pressure mat. It's not clear that the robot can or cannot still do "anything" while the human player is off the pad (other than driving is disabled)

4) Although the term "AUTONOMOUS PERIOD" is in the definitions, it doesn't clearly stipulate what the robot can or cannot do during the time period before or after the AUTONOMOUS PERIOD.

It's all just a fun game, but it's like the rules in golf and in life. Rules are rules.....period.

[Matt Leese]

Disabled means that no input or output will occur in the Robot Controller. The master CPU will prevent any input or output from occurring. There is nothing that you have to do for this to happen.

Activated means that the user processor can perform input and output.

Enables operations means the change of state from activated to disabled.

During the autonomous period, the robot is not disabled but no input from the operator interface is possible.

Matt

[Levin571]

1) Robots are essentially off before the round starts so unless the robots "scanner" is not hooked up to the operation interface it will be off until the starting sound is played and the robots are awoken (i think it is illegal to have parts running before the start sound is played) As for being disabled during the match, that is the judges call and they have a E-stop button at their table

2) The control boards are essentially shut off from the time you hook them up till the time autonomous period is over so no touching them to activate something until driver controled time. Also drivers and operators must stand behind a line a few feet away from the controls until the end of autonomous period

3)Operations include all controls, basically i think it is meant that the control board is completely shut off until the human player returns to their mat (so no driving or arm operations or etc...)

4) Since autonomous is preprogramed, you can do just about anything you can program your robot to do during that time, the sky is the limit

I hope this helps

[Billfred]

Actually, according to IFI's documentation, only the outputs (PWM and relay) are disabled when a robot is disabled. It'll still sense, it'll still send data to the OI, it'll still get data from the OI--it just can't do anything with it.

When a robot is activated--well, you get the idea.

As for the fourth question, unless it says otherwise in the rules, a robot during the autonomous period can do anything a driver would be able to do. Before the autonomous period, the robots are disabled. After, you've got driver control.

IFI's documentation defines these sorts of things pretty well--get them at www.innovationfirst.com if you're up for some fun reading.

[CJO]

Does the robot execute User_Initialization(); when the controller is first turned on? If so, you have just executed code before the sounding horn.