Autonomous Longer????

[Brad Voracek]

Originally Posted by Bongle

No, I like it how it is. Many teams have large difficulties simply doing autonomous, but that isn't because of the length of time given, it's because they find it simply impossible to do whatever action it is in any amount of time.

I think the best way to improve autonomous participation rates would be less fragile or easier to use autonomous-focused equipment. On both teams I've been on in 2006 and 2007, the camera broke or would inexplicably stop working pretty frequently. It takes a long time to set up, a long time to test, and requires a large area to practice in properly. Laptops with serial ports are growing fewer and fewer, and the ones that my teams have been able to afford typically have nonfunctional batteries, so on-field debugging is impossible.

I would LOVE an end-of-game autonomous mode. You could have the end-of-game bonus be being some specific point on the field at the end of the teleoperated period, and at another point at the end of the ending autonomous period.

Problem with an end of game one would be that you'd have issues with game damage possibly getting exacerbated by the robot doing things autonomously. For example: in 2004, our robot had two high-torque motors driving seperate worm gears that moved the arm. Once, one of the wires came undone but the team didn't notice, and the unsynchronized worm gear action actually torqued the entire arm. With start-of-game autonomous, you can disable the autonomous mode to not damage things you've found are damaged. But if match damage breaks a chain or loosens a wire, trouble could ensue.

I would love an end game auto too, it would be interesting. To stop the problems you said, just e-stop yourself before auto starts...