Autonomous at Regionals

[Doug G]

We had (like many I bet) such high hopes for autonomous especially when we had the robot up and running a week before ship. But everyone wanted to practice, and then it would break and we'd fix it up, and before long autonomous was being left by the way side since we had only one student who can come close to programming. Then on the weekend before ship, our comp-port dongle wasn't working, then our gyro didn't work, then we couldn't get printf to work in auto mode, and when the RC failed to recognize the camera - we gave up on it. Lesson learned for next year - have it figured way in advance if you plan to use it!!

This year we have a set of simple dead rec programs that were written of Friday of the Sac Regional. We may play with our gyro and gear tooth counters some more at Nats. But then again will it give us a huge advantage? Probably not.

I still think 2003 was the best auto mode comp - A Race for the Stack of Bins - If you didn't do it, you had to spend the whole match moving / clearing bins. It started your alliance off with such a huge head start. Just think if they had the 2003 Auto mode this year, that would be fun to watch!