Favorite Autonomous Mode

[Bill Moore]

Okay, my favorite is biased, but so what.

2003 Stack Attack. Autonomous is introduced as a major component of the game. My son, Josh, who had been doing general electrical stuff for two years becomes the student leader for autonomous.

First Regional, Chesapeake -- autonomous routines are written as "dead reckoning" routines. GeroniMOE is able to win the race to the wall, and take most of it over about 75% of the time. Good but not good enough.

Second Regional, Philadelphia -- a gyro is mounted to GeroniMOE and autonomous codes are changed to make use of gyro. GeroniMOE still wins race to wall, and effectively captures the wall about 90% of the time. Unfortunately, robot doesn't stop, and in 15 seconds goes too far and hits the player station wall--HARD. (Actually hits at the 9-10 second mark.)

Championships, Houston -- autonomous code is modified to watch the elevation changes as GeroniMOE goes up and down the ramps, and either stops partway down the second ramp, or at the bottom. (Thereby avoiding any robot damage from hitting player station wall.)

Watching Josh work as the lead student, writing and improving the autonomous code as the season progressed, definitely had a very personal satisfaction for me. That year will always be my favorite for autonomous modes.

(I believe they had 12 modes that year, but mainly only used 3 or 4. This years robot had something unbelieveable like 32 or 36 modes, but once again we mainly used 3 or 4 routines. We even had a routine to stop a capper on the center goal in autonomous, just in case, but never had to break it out.)