paper: Modular Sub-Processing

[ericand]

The setup described in the paper is interesting, but seems to violate custom circuit rule R59 (2006 rules) which says that custom circuits may not "Directly affect any output devices on the robot, such as ... supplying a PWM signal to a speed controller..."

We had a custom circuit (PIC) to monitor the rotational speeds of the ball shooter motors, but the hard part was figuring out a communication mechanism back to the RC so that it could make the PWM changes if the speed was too slow or too fast. If we could have had the PIC control the speed directly, we would have had much better control. As it was, the RC just got 2 bits for each motor, which it interpreted as {too fast, just right, too slow, unused state). The RC then adjusted the motor controlling PWM directly (thus in compliance with R59), based on the input from the custom circuit.