New Robot Control System!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Ok, my thoughts on this briefly.

First, I don't particularly like Zigbee, Bluetooth, 802.11[^a], etc for our little application here. Yes they work well for the things they do, but I don't think they'll work all that hot for our robots. Zigbee and 802.11[^a] especially are subject to interference from all sorts of stuff including the myriad of wireless networks that pop up at competitions. We all know they're there, we all know that no amount of FIRST telling people no won't prevent this announcement: "Will all teams please turn off their wireless networks, they are interfering with robots on the field." I realize that pit wifi networks interfering with the field in this manner is a slim possibility. But it is currently impossible for them to interfere with our 900MHz modems. Plus, how many of us demo robots in wifi-dense corporate settings? I don't want our robot failing spectacularly when we try showing off to sponsors. I make exception for 802.11a and other 5GHz flavors since they're in a much less popular and populous band. I realize this opinion probably isn't going to prevent a move to the 2.4 GHz band since it's the only place to go, but I don't have to like it.

Second, running OSes on robots by default. I realize that we're all expert Linux programmers and all that, but moving to that complex of a platform makes me nervous. Nervous for our young teams. This move is certainly going to be accompanied by new graphical tools and wizards for the rookie teams, etc. I think the question is just how much fancy pants autonomous code you're likely to be running out of the simple option. And just how easy it will be to make the jump to the more complex option. Coding in a multi-threaded, preempting real-time operating system is just a little more complicated than what a whole lot of our teams are managing with MPLAB right now.

In summary, yes I'd like more power and memory. But not at the cost of (relative) simplicity and reliability. I'd really be fine with a bigger faster PIC with some SPI and I2C ports available. Given the GDC's stance on repeated code use from year to year, just how much sleep are you and your mentors planning on getting with 6 weeks of coding and debugging this flashy linux RTOS based robot to look forward to?