pic: Game hint

[Turtlecoach]

Originally Posted by T3_1565

I disagree with this.

The field does not need to "control" the robot at all, but "inform" the robot about something (ie. the colour of the goal, what piece this goal accepts, etc..) which is not so easily done through RF.

I believe this seems more like what will happen because the IR signals are jammed very easily (try programming a remote to your board, push a programmed button, and then push a button on a different control from about 10 feet away). This means that if the emitters move around the field, things will be jammed all the time.

It seems more logically (to me anyways) that the emitters will be fixed, so they cannot jam on another and each robot will have to have their IR board programmed to the signals (much like callobrating the camera last year to see that particular light in that building), so more than one robot can interact with the signal at the same time.

Just MHO

I agree with your statement that the field will 'inform' rather then 'control'. I also think we all need to step back away from the jigsaw puzzle piece and try to get a little perspective to see where we are all heading, and figure out what the big picture really is.

Look back over the last few years and see where FRC has been. 2003 - Stack attack, 2004 - Raising the bar, 2005 - Triple Play, 2006 - Aim high & 2007 Rack & Roll. NASA is very involved with FIRST not just because they are great guys and want to see us have a good time. They have definite engineering goals in mind and need answers to problems. How many students attended Atlanta last year? 10K from 23 countries. If I had an engineering company and needed a brainstorming group, ten thousand @ $0 / hr is quite a deal. These hints are to get the brainstorming sessions started so when the season officially starts with the announcement, everyone is already cranked up. I know I am

Where are we going...Mars, in the short term. The games from 2003,2004 & 2005 are constuction exercises (think foundations & building members), 2006 & 2007 were sample collection and storage. 2006 had us picking up uniform samples off the field and delivering them to recepticles with predefined ramps. 2007 had us picking up not so uniform samples and placing them on a multi-tier rack. Don't forget the undefined ramps either. All of these are baby steps to figure out how to get autonomous robots to go out on undefined terain, pickup samples and bring them back to return vehicles. Spirit & Opportunity need to sit and wait for commands from mission control to move the next few feet. NASA wants things to move faster.

Where is the game going this year? The next baby step. I wouldn't be supprised if the game name this year is, "Load um Up". I think that the game will be some sort of collection of samples based with a twist. Samples will be different sizes and will need to go into Field defined bins. Emitters will be in a short tube, as others have mentioned, for selectivity and immunity to outside interference, mounted next to the bins. Robot rolls up, receives info or knowledge from goal as to where the sample needs to be deposited, and acts accordingly. Points for depositing samples, extra points for putting it where the goal tells you, bonus points if you can do it autonomously.

Again...most likely wrong, but people do things for reasons, and companies and goverment agencies even more so. If you look at where you have come from you can often tell where you are going. Never forget the big picture.

[tajmorton]

Has anyone managed to download the firmware off the PIC yet? We tried to build a programmer for it (http://www.techfreakz.org/oldstuff/picb.html), but couldn't find any software that worked with the PIC that's on the board. Anyone have any recommendations of software programmers that work with easy to build HW programmers for the PIC16LF87-I/SO.

- Taj

But where do the opposing robots fit in to this interpretation of past games? Also, the place where you put the "samples" in rack n roll was not in an exact position, there was quite a range of positions that the spider legs could be in and a fairly close fit for the tubes on the rack. Its an interesting interpretation, only time will tell how accurate any of these speculations are.

[Doug G]

Ok it's taken me like 5 days to catch up with this post, whew... Here's my thoughts...

1. It's not going on the Field. If it were on the field what are 1500 teams going to use to interface with it on their practice fields? It would still require another controller and such to hook up to this board so it could actually do something like release an object or control a servo. Perhaps they will give us another circuit setup in the KOP, but I think that is a stretch.

2. It will be a part that can go on the robot that will give your robot more information about the field. I like the ideas folks have mentioned about each corner having an emitter.

3. Perhaps this a clue that we'll finally have an autonomous period at the end of a game. If each corner is emitting a unique IR signal, then robot could determine which way to go home for a bonus score or something.

4. It will be as optional to use as the camera has been the last few years. While as cool as this is, there will be many teams at a lost on how to efficiently interface this in their robot or game strategy.