Favorite Autonomous Mode

[George A.]

Since Team 11 had those nifty shirts showing their love of autonomous mode, that got me thinking. What team had your favorite autonomous mode of all time? Not the actual part of the game but which team had the one that made you go "OMFG!!! How could they do that?!?!"

Here's my picks for each year:

Stack Attack: Wildstang, handsdown how can you compete with someone that takes out all your stacks AND gets on top of the ramp in 15 secs?

First Frenzy: 190 Gompei and the Herd. Geting on the bar in autonomous every time is hard to compete with especially when they can play solid defense once up there.

Triple Play: I forget the team number, but the team that capped the center home goal, knocked off the side hanging tetra CAUGHT the hanging tetra and then capped the corner goal...unbelievable.

So that's mine...what's yours?

P.S. you don't have to have one for each year, these were just my favorites.

[SizzelChest330]

Triple Play!
By far Thunderbots! (980) nobody came close to how awesome they were!!!
First they cap the center home row with the pre-loaded tetra
Next the swing there are over and take the hanging tetr, pull it out and stack on top of the corner goal
Then they drive out and stand in front of the Auto-Loader!
This is by far the best

Second would be Double deuce! (22)
They were able to start with a tetra
Turn around
Cap the center
spin 180" and fork there arm into the hanging tetra
pull back and cap the corner goal...

Thirdly i would say Wildstang (111)
There camera would search for all the positions where the vision tetras are placed.
next it would run a dead-reckon for wherever the tetra was placed and drive to it and stack it (it came so close to)

Theres my top 3

my 3 cents...

[Quatitos]

My favorite autonomous mode would have to go to team 66 for their use of the camera which I have gotten to see cap side goals in person on several occasions. To me something just seems boring about dead reckoning. Their dynamic manuevering produced by their homing in on the tetra was just so exciting to watch. When it picked it up so smooth and when it goes down its just amazing to watch it slide on. I only wish that they had succeeded in capping the center goal once, to make all that hard work worth it.

[henryBsick]

Originally Posted by SizzelChest330

Thirdly i would say Wildstang (111)
There camera would search for all the positions where the vision tetras are placed.
next it would run a dead-reckon for wherever the tetra was placed and drive to it and stack it (it came so close to)

Wow, I am soooooo happy I heard that. I have been preaching that style mode since week 4, read the pwm value once the camera has a find and the run one of 8 pre-programmed "dead reckoning" modes, and I am not even a programmer .

Back on topic, 980's auto is quite insane, I was pitted right next to the practice field and saw them working all the kinks out of it till it was perfect....and insane. Kudos to the 980 coder, you guys have an awesome auto every year.

Also.... to ANY team that even TRIED to use the camera for the vision tets, I congratulate you.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Henry_222

Wow, I am soooooo happy I heard that. I have been preaching that style mode since week 4, read the pwm value once the camera has a find and the run one of 8 pre-programmed "dead reckoning" modes, and I am not even a programmer .

Actually, our autonomous program only uses dead-reckoning to reach the tetra, and that is primarily because our camera is mounted on our lift which is in the process of tilting out while we're driving to it, which causes enough shaking in the camera that if we try to use it for driving it gets very erratic. Once we've picked up the tetra, though, we use vision to drive to the goal (unless the goal is out of the camera's field of view, then it automatically falls back to dead reckoning until the goal is within view).

Back on topic, my favorite autonomous modes this year were from Pink (only saw them on the practice field in the pits, but dang was it fast!) and the Huskies (team 65). Both picked up off the autoloader in autonomous which in retrospect is what our team should have worked on. It would have been much more beneficial to us to start the match with two tetras in hand.

[ThunderChief]

My team, ThunderBots, had a really good autonomous mode at the Championships, but it was disappointing that we could not get our vision tetra routine to be 100% reliable. We spent a great deal of time on it. With our practice robot in our workshop, we were able to have the camera find a vision tetra, drive to it, pick it up and cap the center middle goal. We did it several times. But, of course, it needed a little help from hand-held spot lights to illuminate the colored triangles and the disable switch was useful when it took off in the wrong direction.... Much of the time we could get pretty close. Since we had feedback controls for each of the arm movements, the autonomous program we did use was very reliable and easier than the vision tetra version.

But, my personal favorite was in the 2003 Stack Attack game. From the starting position our robot, Yoda, swung a long gravity-assisted telescoping arm that toppled all but the far stack of bins into our side before any robot could make it up the ramp. Many opponents got stuck in the "Sea of Bins". The only way to retract the ginormous arm was to raise it straight up so gravity would pull it back together and a latch would keep it stowed for the rest of the match. Then, still in autonomous, we would drive up the ramp, over the platform, extend 2 wide arms and push all the bins down the ramp.

In 2004, Team 190, Gompei and the HERD, had the most complex and amazing autonomous. The whole robot was designed to make it work.

[Bill Moore]

Okay, my favorite is biased, but so what.

2003 Stack Attack. Autonomous is introduced as a major component of the game. My son, Josh, who had been doing general electrical stuff for two years becomes the student leader for autonomous.

First Regional, Chesapeake -- autonomous routines are written as "dead reckoning" routines. GeroniMOE is able to win the race to the wall, and take most of it over about 75% of the time. Good but not good enough.

Second Regional, Philadelphia -- a gyro is mounted to GeroniMOE and autonomous codes are changed to make use of gyro. GeroniMOE still wins race to wall, and effectively captures the wall about 90% of the time. Unfortunately, robot doesn't stop, and in 15 seconds goes too far and hits the player station wall--HARD. (Actually hits at the 9-10 second mark.)

Championships, Houston -- autonomous code is modified to watch the elevation changes as GeroniMOE goes up and down the ramps, and either stops partway down the second ramp, or at the bottom. (Thereby avoiding any robot damage from hitting player station wall.)

Watching Josh work as the lead student, writing and improving the autonomous code as the season progressed, definitely had a very personal satisfaction for me. That year will always be my favorite for autonomous modes.

(I believe they had 12 modes that year, but mainly only used 3 or 4. This years robot had something unbelieveable like 32 or 36 modes, but once again we mainly used 3 or 4 routines. We even had a routine to stop a capper on the center goal in autonomous, just in case, but never had to break it out.)

[SuperJake]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

Championships, Houston -- autonomous code is modified to watch the elevation changes as GeroniMOE goes up and down the ramps, and either stops partway down the second ramp, or at the bottom. (Thereby avoiding any robot damage from hitting player station wall.)

I remember one of the modes we used in Houston was a quick hook straight back to knock down any human player stacks that may have been up. Wildstang had erected a 6-bin stack on our side because no one had seen us do the hook mode. When we did it, the look on the Wildstang driver's faces was priceless. Josh was a really awesome programmer.

[krunch79prez]

2003- I loved 312 autonomous mode, they would go up the ramp and take out every box on the ramp, it was pretty impressive to me.

2004- None really stand out

2005- I thought 233 PINK's autonomous mode was awesome when they picked two off the autoloader.

[George A.]

[quote=krunch79prez]2004- None really stand outQUOTE]

You've got to be kidding, not to sound mean or anything but Gompei was the best auto mode ever. Gettting on the bar everytime in autonomous is jaw droppingly amazing...sorry just my ranting and raving.

[Paul H]

[quote=M.O.R.T.]

Originally Posted by krunch79prez

2004- None really stand outQUOTE]

You've got to be kidding, not to sound mean or anything but Gompei was the best auto mode ever. Gettting on the bar everytime in autonomous is jaw droppingly amazing...sorry just my ranting and raving.

It was cool, but in my opinion (not to sound mean) it was a waste of a match...there was so much to do last year, why do something like that where you limit your robot to scoring 50 points? Put that autonomous mode up against any robot that actually does stuff for a whole match THEN hangs and 190 loses. In my mind, a great autonomous mode is more focused on helping win the match than just being cool.

I can imagine that it would be pretty boring to be their 2004 drivers when they ran that auto mode. Nothing to do at all for the whole match.

It was pretty darn cool though.

[George A.]

They didn't just do that, They had an arm that picked up the 2x ball off the middle platform and could cap your stationary goal, or they could use that arm to decap your opponents stationary goal. Also they had flaps that could prevent your opponents to hang from the bar. Couple that with your herding ability you had a pretty awesome allaince. Check out Curie Qf2_m1 on soap 108 last year if you want more proof. That's all for me, let's return this to the primary focus of this thread.

[Juju1031]

My favorite autonomous mode is team 492 because they would drive to the autoloader and grab a tetra then take it back and place it on the left home goal And I also love team 22 auto mode, they were great

[Juju1031]

In 2004 my favorite auto mode was team 254, 60, and22

[Chris Sturrock]

I was really busy at nats, being the driver and all, and I didn't get to see many autonomous modes. but personally, I liked ours (1503), simbotics (1114), and Fesstronics (1680). We capped home center, knocked down the hanging, and the ran to an auto loader and picked up a tetra.