Heading PID tips

[Ben Wolsieffer]

Like many teams this year, we are using a PID controller and a gyro to aim our robot at the high goal (after acquiring the target heading using our vision system).

Our PID controller has been tuned so that it is pretty consistent, but I would like to try to eliminate the small amount of error that is present when the robot stops moving, which causes us to sometimes miss shots.

This problem seems to be mainly caused by the mechanical deadband of the drive system (ie. the amount of throttle that is required before the robot actually starts to rotate). If I increase the I term enough to eliminate the error, the robot starts oscillating for a long time before it finally settles.

As a lot of teams have had to deal with this same situation, I was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks to improve the automated turning performance of the robot.