Finding Distance From Driver Station

[DonRotolo]

Thinking in a different direction: If you were on the field, how would you find your location?

If it were me, I'd just look around, find objects I recognize, and estimate the distance to two or three of them by their relative size in my field of vision.

Turning that into a machine function, you can have your camera rotate until it finds your home driver station wall (this assumes you are able to see it). Hand each of your alliance partners a battery-powered flashing LED, each with a different blink pattern. Your camera sees the blinks, knows which one is where, and calculates location based on separation between LEDs (how close or far apart they are) and angle based on camera rotation.

Sure, there's a few issues to address. For example, what to do when you're up against the driver station wall. Perhaps four Maxbotix distance sensors can help there. Whatever, these issues can be solved.

The point is, consider how nature does this, and emulate. Nature usually has a pretty good algorithm.