Finding problems too late

[Radical Pi]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

In all robot code -- not just ours, but all robots from the coolest of automobile assemblers to the humblest of photocopiers -- there is a subroutine that we call 'Secret Subroutine C'. You cannot delete it, and you cannot in any way remove it, even by reformatting everything and starting over. The best you can hope to do is minimize (not prevent) the chances of it executing, and minimize the damage caused when it executes. It reads only one line, and roughly translated from machine code into English, it reads:

"Run amok and destroy your masters."

Oh, that happened to us once . One of our matches we lost connection to the cypress. I switched the controls over to the compatible mode to show our drivers what they could do if the cypress board failed again, and then I switched it back into cypress mode. I didn't realize the last guy hadn't disabled the bot, and that when the cypress is gone all of the inputs go high, so when I switched it all of the controls defaulted to on and suddenly our kicker starts spinning at full speed, the winch starts running, and the pneumatics to raise our arm activate. I disable it before the arm actually gets enough pressure to raise (something that can be very dangerous if you've seen our bot), but the mentors are instantly questioning me about how it could all activate on it's own. It takes a while for me to explain how I know the exact reason for it.

Oh, also when we were queuing for a match one of our guys bled the air from the pneumatics (I have no idea why) and forgot to close the valve. We spent that match mostly crippled, since our arm needs pneumatics, our kicker needs pneumatics as well, and all we can do is drive around. We promptly put a nice big sign next to the valve that says "close me". Next match? We forget to unwind our winch before the match and our arm gets stuck.