Brakes

[Mike Soukup]

After our two regionals (and after Jack Jones called us out for being easily turnable) we realized that we needed to get better at holding our position. During the fix-it window after WI we added code to dynamically control the brake mode on the drive motor speed controllers. Using the encoders & code we already had on the robot for our our autonomous driving, we regularly poll our custom circuit for the number of ticks each encoder moved since the last request. If both encoder readings tell us that the wheels are "turning slow" we put all four speed controllers in brake mode. All this happens without the driver's input. When the robot is shooting, the driver puts the the robot into low gear. While this doesn't make us unmovable like 25, it does make us very difficult to move or turn if we're locked up against the ramp wall.