1157 Has seen the light

[Alex.Norton]

This year has been going very well for us. We think we are about a week to a week and a half from a fully functioning robot and...

We have turned into a moth that can't stay away from the little green light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx1p7XGtWFE

That is our 2006 robot fully functional and tracking the light. We have made several circuits of our computer lab since we got it running. It will back off if the light moves too high and will move forward if the light gets too low. The driving has also been integrated with the light so that we can translate sideways and forward/backward while still facing the light to make it easier to place tubes during normal play.

This year's bot will have an almost identical drive train so updating the code will involve some gain changes but otherwise be "effortless".

[Barry Bonzack]

Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun. -But Mama, thats where the fun is!


The robot seems to have a personality of its own. You can almost read its mind (IFI) "Must... Have... the light"

[Brad Voracek]

Wow, that's very nice. You guys using PID control for that or what? It seems very smooth. Congrats.

[Alex.Norton]

Yes, that does use PID control. The pan servo on the camera uses a PD control, and the drive base uses a PI control using the pan servo and a yaw rate sensor. It is of course a holomonic drive, so rotation is very natural for the drive base. In addition this allows us to very easily both move towards the light and turn to face the light at the same time.

[Donut]

Very cool. We're in the middle of getting our light tracking working, so I hope ours can work just as well!

Do you use another PI loop with the tilt of the camera to determine distance?

[waiakea2024]

good job. good luck to you guys

[BlondeNerd]

Looks good. I noticed that the cameraman kept saying to bring the light lower. Can it see the light from the top of the rack?

[Nancy Norton]

The robot will be able to see the light at the top of the rack, but at the moment, we've got it aiming low. That enables us to easily move the light around while we're doing code development and have the robot follow us around like a little puppy dog. Once we have this year's camera on this year's robot (that's last year's camera and bot), we'll put the light up at the proper height so we can finish autonomous mode.