Programmers: I Have A Challenge For You

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by efoote868

I used DARPA as an example early on in this thread - teams of professionals and graduate level students with near unlimited bankroll behind them, completing a task that is arguably easier/more straight forward.
It took them two years to complete the challenge.

If you really think the DGC/DUC task is easier than FRC, I think you may be mistaken. Before I moved to California, I worked at MIT with the DGC team on their continuing autonomous land vehicle research. Unknown terrain, traffic laws, REAL safety, and IC engines are all a bit more complicated than our dinky electric drive bases and arms.

But I think anyone trying this can take some experiences away from the DGC. First of all, the teams who had the best software also had the best hardware. If your machine is not mechanically reliable or controllable, you aren't going anywhere fast. One of the biggest lessons I've learned in my years as a software guy in FIRST is that the best software fix is usually a mechanical fix.

As far as the software goes, you really need to start thinking about how to set up your machine as a series of interconnected systems. There are basically three components to an autonomous robot control system: Perception, Planning, and Control. Perception is the data you take in from the world around you (vision, distance, GPS, and their associated post-processing). Planning is the part that understands how to interpret the world around it and make educated decisions on what to do. Control is the part that actually makes the robot do what it wants to do.

If you are familiar with the Model/View/Controller design pattern, you can loosely parallel Perception to the Model, Planning to the Controller, and Control to the View. (Where the model is what you have, the controller is what you want, and the view is what you get.)

[gvarndell]

machine code is in fact a sequence of bytes, but not human readable in the slightest.

Actually, there are some people who can read it. Very very very very few. But I know at least one. Its pretty ridiculous.

It depends on the machine (as well as the people).
Nearly 30 years ago, I didn't need a disassembler to read 6502 opcodes -- 8-bit machine with small instruction set.
Today, 20 years after last touching a 68K machine, I still remember the opcode for the NOP instruction.
Nowadays, even RISC machines have sufficiently complex opcode and operand encoding that I don't even try -- don't need to and there's no glory or money in it if I could.

[mwtidd]

Collaborative Development...?

Seeing as many of the tasks are the same from robot to robot, (ie drive to target) I am wondering what people would think about working on the problem in a collaborative manner. Also if you were to work on a collaborative autonomous engine, what language would you want to use.

(any language is the right language, I'm not trying to open another debate about languages)

[Doug Leppard]

In the latest Wired Magazine (April 2010, page 42) it addressed this issue. Article was called "Advantage: Cyborgs". It asked the question which is smarter humans or machines? As an example machines have been beating humans in chess for years. But if you combine humans with machines as a team they beat both the human alone and the machine alone because the team uses the strength of each.

Really if a FRC machine is done well it is a cyborg of the drivers and machine, each playing the part they do best. I have always pushed for putting as much as intelligence in the machine to help the drivers.

So you drivers and teams out there on the fields are really cyborgs killing off your opponents.

[davidthefat]

You know what, people that bring up DARPA and stuff, you got to think, their goal is totally different than ours, they want to build a machine that is pretty fail proof in the unexpected. We are trying to do it in a known environment with known factors, 2 different ball parks.


edit: I am very offended by the thoughts of some people "highschool programmers" well honestly, that may be tru to a certain extent, but think of the potential of someone that got this far without any help... I learned from books and trying things out myself, I only went to a programming class this year to get my career prep credit but then I learned of robotics through this class... Honestly how many 12 year olds do you see that know C++?

[Tanner]

Originally Posted by gblake

I haven't read this entire thread; but if the folks who have signed up for the original poster's challenge (and any who haven't yet) would like to get a little practice in before attempting this challenge with a real robot - I can make it possible for you to control one or all of the 5th Gear simulated robots purely through software - I did this myself for our Overdrive simulation, and it is definitely a learning experience that would be good prep for attempting to the same with a real bot - Do I have any takers?

I think that'd be pretty neat. Plus then you could experiment with a few different designs. Sure, its a bit of a exact environment, but you get to play with a robot any of the time.

-Tanner

[tsa256]

Originally Posted by Boydean

I would be down with this. I know if I brought it up during a meeting it would be cut down pretty fast, but that doesn't stop me from working on it outside the competition to learn.

I see a lot of time spent in the parking lot with bot the next couple of months.

I like how you think, I'm in the exact same situation, if I brought it up I'd be looked at like I was insane, and I agree it's a challenge, but I'm willing to go for it. Unfortunately I'm the only one on who thinks it's worth a shot. I mean even if it's not perfect the experience would be full of learning opportunities.

One programmer from 1124 is taking on the challenge.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by tsa256

I like how you think, I'm in the exact same situation, if I brought it up I'd be looked at like I was insane, and I agree it's a challenge, but I'm willing to go for it. Unfortunately I'm the only one on who thinks it's worth a shot. I mean even if it's not perfect the experience would be full of learning opportunities.

One programmer from 1124 is taking on the challenge.

Yea you just work on it and if you want to test it just say its experimental code, no one will care unless it goes crazy and runs everyone over

[Rion Atkinson]

Okay, so here goes another post for this thread.

I keep seeing people say "I've been in FIRST four year and am now a mentor. I think you are over ambitious high-schoolers. This can't be done. MIT students can't do it. Not in six weeks anyway." Where are your heads? I mean seriously. Think! You call yourself mentors... Aren't you supposed to inspire? Would those people be and MIT if they weren't ambitious? Would we be here in FIRST if we didn't think that high-schoolers could build robots? I can't say this is true. But I have a feeling that when FIRST was started people like yourself said "That's stupid, high-schoolers can't build robots." And now look! We have teams like 148, 114, 254, 33, and 1114(The list goes on.) who are amazing! I sit back in awe practically drooling at when I see their robot! If I knew that they also had a fully autonomous robot, I would be floored! So please, use your brains and think people. Do we encourage these ambitious students, or do we tell them it can't be done? (Which we all know will just make them want to do it all the more. )

Plus, it's the off-season! I'm going to be starting up my own team, keeping up with school, mastering designing with sheet metal, along with fine-tuning my CAD skills. I see no reason why we shouldn't encourage these students to try their best to do what MIT students take two years to do. I hope they succeed! Do I expect them to get a almost perfect code by the beginning of next season? YES! Do I expect them to have a fully autonomous robot for next season bot? No, but I would love to see it!

I would personally offer any help that is needed, but I am not a programmer. I'll be over here cheering you on though.

Go for it guys, have fun, learn, fail, stand up, do it all over again, and then when there seems to be no hope. You will succeed.

-Rion

P.S. - FIRST isn't DARPA.

Feel free to give me some bad rep for this post, I don't care.

[davidthefat]

So just got the book http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-A.../dp/026219502X

Now read some of it, there are so many wheel configurations you can do and I think I want to attempt 2 and 4 legged bots later...

Will post a chart later

[davidthefat]

[theprgramerdude]

Originally Posted by lineskier

Collaborative Development...?

Seeing as many of the tasks are the same from robot to robot, (ie drive to target) I am wondering what people would think about working on the problem in a collaborative manner. Also if you were to work on a collaborative autonomous engine, what language would you want to use.

(any language is the right language, I'm not trying to open another debate about languages)

This is what I was thinking. We could try to get a giant, inter-team project going, with each team responsible for certain sections of code, which gets tossed back and forth via e-mail, etc.

Should we start a sign-up list for those that want to do this over our 8-month break? I'm definitely psyched for this.

Edit: Plus, the rules would allow us to use this code next year (with modifications for the THAT game) as long as we keep releasing it to the public.

[Radical Pi]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

This is what I was thinking. We could try to get a giant, inter-team project going, with each team responsible for certain sections of code, which gets tossed back and forth via e-mail, etc.

This sounds like a project for...google wave (finally a real use for that site). I have 25 invites laying around if anyone wants to try setting up for that

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

This is what I was thinking. We could try to get a giant, inter-team project going, with each team responsible for certain sections of code, which gets tossed back and forth via e-mail, etc.

Should we start a sign-up list for those that want to do this over our 8-month break? I'm definitely psyched for this.

Edit: Plus, the rules would allow us to use this code next year (with modifications for the THAT game) as long as we keep releasing it to the public.

If that were to work, people will have to pick one common language and people will have to code so well and comment very well too, I think its way too hectic to do it online, but if its in person, Im down..

[ideasrule]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

This is what I was thinking. We could try to get a giant, inter-team project going, with each team responsible for certain sections of code, which gets tossed back and forth via e-mail, etc.

Should we start a sign-up list for those that want to do this over our 8-month break? I'm definitely psyched for this.

Edit: Plus, the rules would allow us to use this code next year (with modifications for the THAT game) as long as we keep releasing it to the public.

I'm definitely interested in this collaborative project. A completely autonomous robot certainly can't perform better than a human driver, but the code that'll be developed will almost certainly be useful for the autonomous period.