How are you going to operate you're robot?

[joshsmithers]

my plan, though it wasn't thought of highly by fellow team-members(COUGH-luke-COUGH), i thought it was very interesting.

somehow attach bricks to the underside of the flightsticks and hold the controllers in the air. say you're driving a tank with two joysticks. when you want to go forward, simply move the sticks so they're at an angle to the pull of gravity (the ground). the bricks will keep the bottom parts of the joysticks parallel to the ground and you're robot will ultimately go forward.

the only problem is that your arms would get tired.
and it's just not practical, cool, but not practical.

[Dantvman27]

Heres our set up





the black one is drive, pretty basic, the middle one is the arm, the 3rd one is just there because we needed 3 more buttons for the ramp



we orginally had programmed a ps2(look alike) controller to use the chicklet but found it sort of annoying and too sensitive so we went with this, which i built and am very proud of(I'm not an engineer)

[kaszeta]

Originally Posted by Dantvman27

the black one is drive, pretty basic, the middle one is the arm, the 3rd one is just there because we needed 3 more buttons for the

This is definitely a year when we could use more buttons.

Last year, we had a CH Product gameport throttle with one axis and 15 programmable buttons (as long as you didn't need to push two at a time). Rather nice, but it had an alarming tendency to lose it's settings during a competition, and considering that reprogramming it required a DOS boot disk and a computer with a floppy drive, gameport, and ps/2 keyboard adapter, I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle anymore.

This year, I'm using a Logitech Extreme 3D and a chicklet, and w still want more than the 8 buttons...

[razor95kds]

with skill...

this year we are using two modded KOP with screwdriver handles and built in switch like 296 last year and a custom box with tons of switches for presets, claw control, ramp deployment and emergency shifter switch. It also has two infinte urn pots for fine adjustment for the arm and wrist.

[Rick-906]

Originally Posted by razor95kds

with skill...

this year we are using two modded KOP with screwdriver handles and built in switch like 296 last year and a custom box with tons of switches for presets, claw control, ramp deployment and emergency shifter switch. It also has two infinte urn pots for fine adjustment for the arm and wrist.

ohhhh that was soooo fun to do! and it only cost us about $3.50

[Stvn]

The thing with the red switch is a Disable Switch connected to the competition port. The whole OI folds and is able to be carried. The two joysticks are wired to one port and used for driving. Their buttons shift gears. We are using an Xbox 360 controller and a USB Chicklet for controlling the arm. There's actually room and wires for a second chicklet, but only one is mounted because we only needed one. There's also a thumb switch for autonomous modes and a panel of eight LED indicator lights, which works and no longer has tape over it marking things to be done.

The OI in back is last year's with a chicklet plugged in. It was used for testing our prototype while our new OI was being designed.

[Zuhaib Ali]

our team is using ps 2 controllers to control our drive and operator systems

[Danny Diaz]

Team 418 has a control system for driving the robot pretty much exactly like everyone else, 2 CH FlightSticks. However, for our Operator, we have a pretty ingenious control arm - seems like teams 1100 and 1138 also thought of the same thing. It removes the need for "presets" because the actual position of our arm is the preset - the pots on the control arm are calibrated to the pots on the robot via software, so when we move our control arm to a specific position we in effect move our robot arm to that exact same position. Most of the buttons on the control board are just pass-throughs to the buttons on the joystick, so the operator can use the buttons on the control stick or on the control board and they do the same thing. 2 of the buttons are pass-throughs on the "unused" joystick port; we only use that port when we're diagnosing code.



The only things we don't show are the Laptop with our really sweet LabVIEW-based Ultra-Dashboard and our light bar that's attached to an NI USB-6009 DAQ device. We have a relatively poor quality video of our unfinished (prototype) dashboard showing our robot arm and what we were able to do with the LabVIEW Dashboard and the LabVIEW Picture Controls - watch the robot arm in the video as it moves with the real robot arm. You've got to look closely at the screen, the drawn robot arm doesn't come through as well as its joints. Pretty Sweet, can't wait until Lone Star.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...77271172543924

-Danny

[razor95kds]

Originally Posted by Rick-906

ohhhh that was soooo fun to do! and it only cost us about $3.50

blowtorch + screw driver = fun