Control System Design Contest Proposal

[Matt Krass]

Background: In this thread about Jaguars vs Victors I suggested a design competition for FRC teams to design a new integrated control system to replace the current one, which many feel is too disjointed and complicated. That discussion started to dominate the thread and I decided to form one here to hold that discussion, the relevant part of my original post is below:

Personally, I'd really like to see FIRST open up the control system with a design competition. Let teams design and submit control system ideas, designed around what teams want/need and their resources and let the FIRST community and it's thousands of brilliant minds weigh in. We already have a competition to design robots in the winter and spring, why not control system summer and fall?

While the guys at NI and TI have done an admirable job, I do agree the current system is an amalgam of several good ideas with bits hacked together to work in a manner that's.... well let's go with frustrating. But those guys were small in numbers, and probably did not have all that much to work with. I sincerely think the mentors and students of FIRST stand a good chance of coming up with an effective, workable solution to our somewhat oddball use case. Even if only because of the sheer amounts of brainpower we have at our disposal.

So, what have you guys got? Maybe we should start with a list of basic requirements for the system, I've quoted part of Al's suggested requirement from the original thread:

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

So here is my list...
1. Out of the box it has to work for rookies running default software or at least is easily loaded with default software without any other programming in less than one half hour.
2. Can control Jags or Victors, Spikes or whatever control devices someone wants to include to drive motors and such.
3. Can run down to 4 volts input.
4. Has imbedded wireless controls of some sort.
5. Has sufficient software power to process sensors, cameras, etc. and development includes C++, Java, Labview or any other development software in general use.
6. Has at least a serial port and an ethernet port, several would be ideal.
7. Has sufficient I/O for at least 8 or 16 PWM, relay, solenoid, digital and analog ports and/or can be simply expanded for the I/O needed (i.e. plugin modules).
8. I/O is easily accomplished without sophisticated tooling.
9. Is a mature product or product line available to all teams, domestic and foreign.
10. Always of interest is something that is low cost, or is manufactured by a company interested in donating sufficient quantities to help our teams keep costs low.

Please keep in mind that team expansion is increasing by leaps and bounds and could easily reach 8-10,000 in this decade. Please feel free to add to this list your requirements.

and then my two cents:

Originally Posted by Matt Krass

On top of that, a big requirement from me is that it be more robust, and i don't mean in terms of environmental conditions. I mean high school students plugging it in backwards and short circuiting it and getting swarf (still laughing) in it. I think the blue bits are quite well designed, based on the fact that my students haven't managed to kill them yet .

Let the discussion begin!

Matt