Programmers: I Have A Challenge For You

[JamesBrown]

Not to burst any one's bubble but there appears to be a severe lack of understanding of how large of an undertaking autonomous programming really is. There are many programmers in this thread, some of whom have already said they are new to programming who think this is feasible. I urge you all to re think this and to take this in small steps, automate a task in Tele-op, i.e. automatic aiming.

I think that it is important to improve the level of software development that we see in FIRST. However the posts in this thread show a severe lack of appreciation for the difficulty of developing true autonomous robots. I urge anyone considering this to talk to some of the more experienced software and control mentors on your teams and on Chief Delphi about the feasibility of this. If you still think it is practical or possible then rather than wasting a build season trying this, why not exhibition matches at one of the fall off season competitions, and any one who is interested could write autonomous code and test the feasibility of this type of competition in that environment.


-James

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

Not to burst any one's bubble but there appears to be a severe lack of understanding of how large of an undertaking autonomous programming really is. There are many programmers in this thread, some of whom have already said they are new to programming who think this is feasible. I urge you all to re think this and to take this in small steps, automate a task in Tele-op, i.e. automatic aiming.

I think that it is important to improve the level of software development that we see in FIRST. However the posts in this thread show a severe lack of appreciation for the difficulty of developing true autonomous robots. I urge anyone considering this to talk to some of the more experienced software and control mentors on your teams and on Chief Delphi about the feasibility of this. If you still think it is practical or possible then rather than wasting a build season trying this, why not exhibition matches at one of the fall off season competitions, and any one who is interested could write autonomous code and test the feasibility of this type of competition in that environment.


-James

Yes I am aware of the difficulty of the problem at hand, but I have always learned that with good preparation, anything is possible. Before I even write a single line of code, I would have to do a lot of studying and pseudo coding. Like I said in previous posts, if all goes wrong, the driver can just press a switch to go into real teleop. thats just one if statement. Yea I always take programming in small steps, get the smaller things working then work up

[efoote868]

You know that DARPA ran its challenge twice before a team even completed it?
The challenge was (arguably) more straight forward: get your unmanned vehicle around a 150 mile track.
Teams also sunk large sums of money into the project, they also had a year to prepare beforehand.


I say this because having a fully autonomous robot may be *impossible* in 6 weeks, unless of course your team can come up with a 469 strategy.



In 2007, another programmer and I were able to make the robot *nearly* autonomous - the drive team only had to drive the robot to tubes, and drive the robot to the rack. The robot took care of controlling when the gripper mechanism opened (to grasp a tube), the robot took care of raising the tube to the dedicated height (level 1, 2, or 3 for the rack), and the robot sensed when the rack was within scoring distance (and shut, then released accordingly). After the tube was scored, the driver would back away, and the robot's mechanism would go down to the bottom level, and the wheels to grab the tubes would start spinning again.

This took two veteran programmers two weeks to accomplish, and the robot still wasn't fully autonomous.




My advice:
Do as much as you can in your robot, mask as much of the work as you can from the drivers, and you will have a successful time on the field. The less the drivers have to think about, the faster and better they can think about it.


To all yous looking to complete this challenge, good luck!

[theprgramerdude]

The main thing I want to try, however, is attaching some PC components as add-on's for image processing.

From a cognitive stand-point, a thinking, autonomous robot must have some of the same capabilities as a human does. Currently, robots are stupid and dumb because they lack these capabilities for thinking, as well as the ability to sense accurately. DARPA challengers failed because they lacked the processing power to see and analyze in real-time, something a human has the power to do. If we could harness an actual CPU (and maybe score with a CUDA GPU, who knows?), an autonomous program is definitely feasible as long as the problem is approached from the correct angle, by trying to emulate a human's problem-solving skills. Otherwise, it'll eventually just encounter an anomaly and be unable to correct itself.

/rant, it's late at night

[ideasrule]

Oh my god. I'll be graduating next year and I'm fairly experienced in programming, but I've no idea how to do this. I think I'd have to spend a year reading about artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms, machine learning, and the like before I can even attempt this.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

DARPA challengers failed because they lacked the processing power to see and analyze in real-time, something a human has the power to do.

I believe you'll find that the DARPA contestants had large, jeep styled vehicles filled with computers and sensors - more computing power and more sensors than your team will be able to afford.

They also had tens to hundreds of programmers and engineers trying to solve a very specific problem - avoid obstacles on a road.
More time, more man power, and an *easier* challenge.




Take a portion of this years game - defense. Defense is as simple as harassing a robot. A challenge that will keep you up for days is determining what is a robot, and what is a field element. Another problem that will keep you up is determining which robot is the one you want to defend. The last problem is *how* you defend it.

All of these are decisions that a human can make very very quickly - Harass this robot, stay between it and the goal, and make sure it doesn't take a shot.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by efoote868

I believe you'll find that the DARPA contestants had large, jeep styled vehicles filled with computers and sensors - more computing power and more sensors than your team will be able to afford.

This is correct. Stanley, the winning entry in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge ran off of 6 1.6GHz Pentium M laptops stored in the trunk.

[ideasrule]

AI is still a long way off from being able to emulate the human brain, so I doubt that any autonomous program, even if run on the world's fastest supercomputer, could approach the skill of the worst driver.

<off-topic speculation>Soon after getting into AI, you'd have to get into how the human brain works, and what makes it sentient. It's possible that humans have only a very dim consciousness at birth that grows stronger as years' worth of experiences are built into the hardware of the brain. In that case, how would you give a robotic program those many years of training necessary for common-sense tasks that humans can easily do?</off-topic speculation>

[progal]

With a few photoeyes, I'd definitely be up for the challenge!

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by efoote868

A challenge that will keep you up for days is determining what is a robot, and what is a field element. Another problem that will keep you up is determining which robot is the one you want to defend.

Both can be accomplished by looking for the bumpers.

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/3843
(obviously would have to be ported to Java ME)

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by lineskier

Both can be accomplished by looking for the bumpers.

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/3843
(obviously would have to be ported to Java ME)

Do you realize that the code was run on a 2.6 ghz processor... cRio is not that fast

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Do you realize that the code was run on a 2.6 ghz processor... cRio is not that fast

Yeah, my thinking was try removing the ranging and center of mass calculations

Also you can shrink the viewing area as you know you are looking between 10 and 16 inches off the floor.

I think something able to detect a rectangle at a given height and a given color would definitely be feasible.

[Rion Atkinson]

Okay. So I keep seeing a lot of people saying "This is going to be to hard. You are wasting your time." Come on guys! FIRST is about Inspiring! I was taught the basics of CAD in my Pre-Engineering Academy. The very basics. And over the summer, I did this with Inventor. Why? Because I was inspired to do so through FIRST. I wanted to learn! By the end of this years season, I had taught myself SolidWorks and am now making this.

Had I told you guys that I was going to go off and teach myself CAD, would you have said "It's to big of a challenge. I wouldn't even consider it", or would you encourage me? Because it seems that you are all saying that you would just discourage me.

That being said. I wish I was a programmer, I would love to join you guys in taking on the daunting task. I wish you the best of luck! Keep on inspiring yourselves!

-Rion

(P.S. Nothing is impossible. )

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Formerly Famous

Okay. So I keep seeing a lot of people saying "This is going to be to hard. You are wasting your time." Come on guys! FIRST is about Inspiring! I was taught the basics of CAD in my Pre-Engineering Academy. The very basics. And over the summer, I did this with Inventor. Why? Because I was inspired to do so through FIRST. I wanted to learn! By the end of this years season, I had taught myself SolidWorks and am now making this.

Had I told you guys that I was going to go off and teach myself CAD, would you have said "It's to big of a challenge. I wouldn't even consider it", or would you encourage me? Because it seems that you are all saying that you would just discourage me.

That being said. I wish I was a programmer, I would love to join you guys in taking on the daunting task. I wish you the best of luck! Keep on inspiring yourselves!

-Rion

(P.S. Nothing is impossible. )

Never too late to start programming, honestly, with FIRST oversimplifying the libraries, you can pick up programming the cRio in less then a week to be honest with you. But if you want to get really deep into programming, it takes lots of practice.

[Rion Atkinson]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Never too late to start programming, honestly, with FIRST oversimplifying the libraries, you can pick up programming the cRio in less then a week to be honest with you. But if you want to get really deep into programming, it takes lots of practice.

See, I went to a LABView thing before the season started. I had to leave early. But I was able to pick up enough to read the language. And I am currently programming in my aerospace class. But even that is following a book. I have learned that it is easier to read than write. (I have been able to read JAVA for some time now. Writing is a whole nother story though...)

I tried doing a little bit of programming... Didn't work out to well... It would take all summer for me to program a tele-op mode.... That's with a mentor.