2005 RadioShack Innovation In Control Award--What Won?

[Andrew Rudolph]

We won for our holonomic control and Arm control systems in Houston. PID is heavily involved. And lots of fun sensor action from the front to the back.

[Lisa Perez]

Our drive system worked in a non-linear (I believe it was quadratic) function when the controls were manipulated so that the robot would not begin with quite as much speed.

Also, we had a learn-and-read function, which allowed us to have 8 distinct autonomous programs which we could create in practice rounds. With this function, we could drive the robot how we wanted it to drive in autonomous mode, all while this information was being recorded. During the actual matches, we could then pick which recording we wanted depending on strategy (for example, the recording which allowed us to stack on a side goal, or the recording which allowed us to drive toward middle center goal) and in essence, replay it.

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by Lisa Perez

Our drive system worked in a non-linear (I believe it was quadratic) function when the controls were manipulated so that the robot would not begin with quite as much speed.

Our drive system also worked in a non-linear way, using a step function and quadratics. However, I thought that was fairly typical.

Originally Posted by Lisa Perez

Also, we had a learn-and-read function, which allowed us to ... in essence, replay it.

The learn and read function is pretty cool. I can't remember exactly which team it was, but last year the winner of the Control Award at the Pacific Northwest competition did just that.

[xzvrw2]

We won at midwest. it is the first time we have ever won anything in controls in the whole 9 year existance of my team.


we won it because we use a "mini-me" to operate our arm. we use 3 pots on our "mini-me" and 3 pots on our arm, all at the same joints. if we move one thing on the "mini-me" then that part of the arm moves. here is a pic of it:

[Bcahn836]

Team 836 won the Radioshack Innovation and Control Award at the Chesapeake regional. We won this award through our autonomous mode chooser. I am not totally sure how it works, but it is a series of switches mounted toward the front of the robot, each switch was a different operation in auto mode, however we had it setup so that you can do multiple operations during auto mode. And these switches or any combination of switches could be set at any time. So all we had to do was set the start position, then a task or two or three, for example hanging tetra, then left loader or right loader. Additionally we extruded the program and reset buttons to a safe and accessible spot.
This is the second time team 836 has won this award but not for the same thing.

[The Cyborg]

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

We won at midwest. it is the first time we have ever won anything in controls in the whole 9 year existance of my team.


we won it because we use a "mini-me" to operate our arm. we use 3 pots on our "mini-me" and 3 pots on our arm, all at the same joints. if we move one thing on the "mini-me" then that part of the arm moves. here is a pic of it:

(Super huge dial-up unfriendly picture of our mini-me control that takes up the screen )

There is also more involved with the award, including our very first autonomous box, that read data from an encoder attached to a fifth wheel, located in the center of the robot, under the arm. The autonomous box helped us create accurate autonomous modes, with very little use of dead reckoning. We usually have gotten a decent auto mode upon the third or fourth attempt because of the simplicity in creating autonomous modes.

To summarize it, this year's auto modes were waaaaay better than our past two year's poor attempts at what we call autonomous modes, mostly because of the improvements in controls.