2005 RadioShack Innovation In Control Award--What Won?

[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.