REWARD OFFERED: A CAPPED VISION TETRA ON THE CENTER FIELD GOAL

[ldeffenb]

He says, as if in a trance, "I see the Tiki moving off to another team" and sighs deeply.

I would love to see video of these "close" shots at the center goal! Especially those that followed the wrong yellow! Having stood as coach (and head of the software group) and watched our own lift backdrive at the final crucial moment, I can certainly identify with how you felt.

If you'd like to see videos of two *very* close attempts at the center goal with a vision tetra (along with the initial tetra!), download "20050312 Vision Tetras.torrent" from my BitTorrent tracker at http://ldeffenb.dnsalias.net:30049. Remember, this was our first and ONLY regional competition (we're not a rich team).

We have a camera on board, have code to identify all 8 possibilities from each of the three starting points, drive paths to acquire and deliver those tetras to the center (and, in some cases side) goals, only to discover that our drive and lift were slow enough that we only had a chance at delivering the center 2 positions to the center goal.

That's when we decided to use the motion to handle the initial tetra as well (hey, 3 points and owning the center in autonomous is better than 0 points looking like a sitting duck). (Want to watch painful replays? Download "20050310-12 386 Auto SloMo.mpg.torrent" for slow motion reruns of all of our automous runs. They'll make any software team cry from the effort wasted when software meets hard(ware) reality!)

We now know that we're tilting too far towards the goal and that our lift motor backdrives (watch closely in QF4-2) and those problems will be corrected in Atlanta. If no one does it before that, it'll be a race to the finish as far as Team Voltage 386 is concerned!

We *will* do it (vision tetra onto center goal) in Atlanta!

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Coach and Software Mentor

PS. Download a BitTorrent client at www.BitTorrent.com or www.BitTornado.com (Windoze only).