Driver's Controls

[Ken Delaney]

Originally posted by purplehaze357
two joystick tank drive system....with a third joystick for JJ....hes our mini-bot

Since people are talking about their other controls I figured I would add to purplehaze's repsonse. Our robot has two independently controlled arms, that can extend and retract, rotate forward and back 25 degrees. Each have a claw at the end to grab or release the goal.

The operator has complete control of each arms' functions. We use a pot to pot control for the arms rotations. Momentary buttons to control the extension and retraction. A momentary button allows the operator to toggle the claw open or close. The best switch on the control box is the smart mode switch, which allows the arms to grab the goals automatically. The operator can override certain functions while in smart mode.

We also have a switch for the transmission(Hi to Lo). And another switch to activate JJ. The last switch is a reset button to put the bot back into its starting position. That is 10 digital inputs and 2 analogs inputs going through the box alone. We built the box and code well before the bot was finished. We tested and debugged in about 2 days of actual time with the robot.