anyone have any ideas about next years game?

[apalrd]

Originally Posted by Klynn

...But the it's going to take more time trying to figure out how to drive it with only the camera...

We have a camera on our robot, fed to the Dashboard at 120x160. We only use the camera for dashboard feedback, and the framerate is good (although there is lag). During a practice session at CTC, the driver was able to drive down the indoor street from the shop, turn a corner into hallway, and drive the practice robot into the CAD room (standard-size door, no bumpers on the robot), with only the camera.

When the robot got back, I had a little tuning to do on the ride height, so I setup the controls on a bench in the shop. After fixing the ride height problem and flashing the code, I drove it out the doors and into the street (there are streets at CTC indoors), and drove around without any possibility of seeing the robot. I was semi-able to collect balls (the largest problem was blind spot directly in front of the robot), aim at people around 15 feet away, and kick. It was fun. I was then able to get the robot up to its full speed of 13.2 ft/sec in high gear, something we had never measured before on this robot (we measured 11.5 on the practice bot), driving by camera. The lag isn't that bad, only about 1s behind reality, so with enough practice you can account for that and follow, say, a line down the side of the road (something we did)

We did not train our drivers to drive by camera; we only use the camera on-field to give the coach feedback on balls hidden out of sight. But in the ~hour and two batteries of practice bot driving we had, we found it quite easy to drive by camera (even in high gear), although the lag time made it difficult to collect balls and perform accurate tasks quickly.