IR during teleopertated period?

[Greg Marra]

Now you're thinking.

[IbleedPink233]

The rules states pretty clearly that you can, but you have to think about a few things: IR range is limited and subject to interference, so the radio control will always be more dependable; not only that, but interactive control from the driver station will always beat out whatever automated actions you have programmed in the robot, simply because it is more flexible (you can actually effectively counter defense). So I don't think that the IR will be very useful for controlling the robot during the Teleoperated Period.
Of course, I do have an idea about how it could be used, but it's a secret. . .

I was thinking the only useful reason to do this is if you have your Robocoach in the satellite station and he helps turn if the teleop driver's vision is impaired because of the distance and/or another robot is blocking the view.

[popo308]

One problem with using it during teleoperated mode would be if the driver is trying to do something and the ROBOCOACH thinks he will be "helpful" and send a signal it could really get annoying to the driver when the robot starts moving when he/she isn't wanting it to move...

[Justin M.]

You can trigger certain autonomous routines from a switchor something on your control board...I'd recommend doing that. Like people said before Radio is much more reliable than IR.

[IbleedPink233]

Originally Posted by popo308

One problem with using it during teleoperated mode would be if the driver is trying to do something and the ROBOCOACH thinks he will be "helpful" and send a signal it could really get annoying to the driver when the robot starts moving when he/she isn't wanting it to move...

This would definitely be a big problem if the Robocoach is in the remote station (remote as in distant, the GDC should have chosen a less ambiguous word), where they can't communicate with the drivers well.
This problem could also be fixed in software by making the radio control override the coding from the remote - so that the driver control always wins and they don't have to worry about fighting the will of the Robocoach.

[mole]

yea our team was thinking of a way to increase the range of the ir signal


it would be pretty useful to have the robocoach on the otherside of the field helping the driver when he can. You might need to find a way to communicate with each other though.. I was thinking of some ways of doing that



Good Luck

[Aubreii]

Without communication between the RoboCoach and the driver, this seemed to be a pretty useless feature. If your driver can't see 54', even with a few robots between them and their own, they need glasses (like me ). Walky-talkies aren't permitted, but we had thought about a hard-wired system. Myself and another member of our team are also in Theatre Tech, and we both thought of using the headsets we use during shows. However, the infrastructure needed for them ruled that out. If anyone comes up with a way to communicate without breaking the rules, we'd all be interested in hearing it.

[Nightfall831]

communication would definately be an issue...i found that out recently at a convention we took our robot to...i decided to sit on our bot while i drove it with my remote and the IR board....it was great untill our driver decided he wanted to drive from across the very large room...lets just say i got real friendly with the circuit breaker...

another problem our team has is that if the IR board recieves a command, it locks out the joysticks, so the actual driver loses control of the robot...

i actually just thought of a way to fix that, but god only knows if it will work....programming sucks...

an interesting thought i saw somewhere else was to have the robocoach send signals to the board to send signals to the driver if he cant see, but that seems like a waste of the limited number of commands we have.

[Clifford]

Unless you went completely autonomous. But who wants to do that when we've got a brand new toy?

[popo308]

Originally Posted by Clifford

Unless you went completely autonomous. But who wants to do that when we've got a brand new toy?

Exactly i just see it being an annoyance to the driver more than an assistance...