Gyros (NOT the sandwich)

[archiver]

Posted by Brad Pflum, Coach on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Gunn High School and Nasa Ames, Sun Microsystems.

Posted on 2/28/99 11:56 PM MST


In Reply to: Gyros (NOT the sandwich) posted by Dan on 2/26/99 10:19 PM MST:



: What's the word at regionals about gyros? Does Beatty have a post-game autonomous mode like we predicted? OK, it's just a little illegal and very impossible . .but let's hear it. Speak up all yee at regionals. :-Dan

We put a Gyro on our arm. It senses any unintensional movement in the arm and corrects by powering the motors.
The arm also has an aray of limit switchs which are used to recalibrate the gyro every time it passes the sensors.
We also use it to get the arm perfectly vertical regardless of the base's position (if it were half on the puck, for example, a simpler system would pout the arm perpendicular to the base while our system keeps it perp to the ground) when it's holding the basket o' floppies up.
It works great & was all done by a (quite brilliant) sophomore, Ben Herbert.

One problem is that it sometimes overcorrects and due to the slowness and inconsistancies of the control box, the arm sometimes goes into a seisure and occilates uncontrolably. it's still really neat & i wish i knew enough programing to do that kind of stuff

-Brad
Senior at Gunn High School
Co-Captain and Coach, Gunn Robotics Team