[Official 2007 Game Design] Autonomy And Other Technology Discussions

[Mike Shaul]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Uhhh, says who? .....

I think that limiting it only to students could hurt FIRST. Some teams have different resources. Some schools don't have any programing classes or students interested in programing. Our team has a limited interest in programing (most people want to build, its more exciting than sitting at the computer) but we use the opportunity to teach the interested students about the basics of programing, why its important, etc. Our students do write code for the robot but autonomous would be difficult without engineer involvement. Not to mention, it gives the engineers an opportunity to show why they went to college, what they have learned and how it applies to our jobs.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

The beautiful thing about autonomous this year, and in years prior, is that you didn't *have* to use the camera, or other sensor if you didn't want to or didn't have the resources.
You could always dead-reckon it if you had to, and I think that needs to stay. I love the advanced sytem autonomous points, but we should keep an easy couple of points in there for the rest of the teams.

In Triple Play, you could use dead reckoning to get the hanging tetra and/or use the one tetra the alliance was given to cap a goal. Yes, getting the vision tetra involved, well, vision.

The problem with auton in Triple Play was that the rewards were not enough. 26 points were theoretically possible - drop both hanging tetras, get the vision tetra on the goal in the middle of the field, and cap the center home-row goal to generate a row. But how many vision tetra cappings were there all season? In reality, your alliance was doing good to get 5 points in auton, a rather insignificant number in the whole game.

Aim High had a very meaningful auton reward - not only the 10 point bonus, but playing defense first. Winning auton put you in a very good position to win the match. Maybe the pendulum swung too far this year, but it certainly made auton an important feature in the game. And there were multiple things to do - high goal via either camera or dead reckoning, low goal, play defense.

We need an autonomous mode with real rewards for the teams that master it. There also has to be something for those with lesser programming skills to do. IMO, this year's game provided more of those kinds of options than Triple Play did. Hopefully future games will continue the trend.

[Jherbie53]

This seems like the right area to talk about this, so here it goes. It would be nice to have more and different sensors in the KOP. I think if there are certain motors that are known to get a little warm if put under the wrong strain, then it would be nice to have heat sensors that you can attach to them for monitoring them. I'm not sure if hot motors are a big problem, but they do heat up pretty quickly when they are pushed to far. Also there could be a heat source in stead of a light for tracking during the game.

This is also a stretch, what about a small LCD screen that is used on the controls or something. This could replace some of the warning lights on the control panel. If theres enough room for memory, it could also be used for other things, like a heads up display with specific information about your robot, real time scoring, using a camera to look around, and other things I'm not thinking of.

I don't know how much these would add to the cost of the KOP, but they would be cool to have. It might be a couple of years before they are cost effective for FIRST to put in the KOP, but I will just have to wait.

[sanddrag]

It would be neat to have stereoscopic vision and advanced pixel comparison and image processing capability. Unless at intersections, you won't really find a nice green light out in the real world.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

It would be neat to have stereoscopic vision and advanced pixel comparison and image processing capability. Unless at intersections, you won't really find a nice green light out in the real world.

Some how I see a camera like that a little too expensive for the Kit of Parts. Not to mention since half or less of teams got the camera working with just a green light, it would probably be even worse dealing with a more complicated camera.

On the note of heat sensors, why not bring back the current sensors? I'm pretty sure they were included in the 2004 KOP. LCDs would be nice, but they'd need something so we could output effectively to it.

Defense was actually something I liked about autonomous this year. I want to watch the "superb" autonomous modes out there not only score effectively, but compensate for the interference of another robot and still score effectively.

In 2005 they should have increased the overall time a little, but that was by far the most difficult task for autonomous (this year had a stationary target). This year was good though. I think as long as a reasonable time is found for the task every year then things are good for difficulty.

[ahecht]

I want to see some easy way for teams to determine their exact position on the field. It would greatly expand the possabilities in autonomous mode for those teams that don't want to build an INS.

There are lots of options: a commercial Local Positioning System, fixed ultrasonic emitters around the field (used for triangulation), overhead camera data fed to the robots (ala RoboCup Soccer), a gradient on the carpet (ala RoboCup Jr), etc.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Donut

On the note of heat sensors, why not bring back the current sensors? I'm pretty sure they were included in the 2004 KOP.

While I also wouldn't mind seeing a set included in the KOP, I don't recall seeing them in the 2004 KOP.

This is going to sound a little silly, but knowing how many teams (mine included) like to take the "Who needs sensors?" approach to autonomous for whatever reason, would it be possible to get a smallish patch of carpet in the kit to test how the robot handles in that oh-so-critical first few feet of the program? The difference between standard-issue school tile floor and FIRST field carpet is somewhat significant.

[Lil' Lavery]

Keep autonomous big. Keep it REALLY big. This year was good, but it could be MORE. And KEEP robot interaction in auto.
While rookies and some teams may suffer from big auto modes, with auto modes that enable and even promote interaction by having big rewards and close starting positions you can create simpler auto codes that can alter the autonomous portion of the game. A simple "drive straight" code could change whether or not the opponent managed to hit a bunch of shots in the center, or none. It allows for basically a lesser function autonomous to acheive an important goal. You don't even need an advanced manipulator to accomplish it.
Another cool idea would to be follow FVC's example. Many people have talked about having auto portions of the field. FVC had two seperate games, autonomous and operator controlled. Your rankings in both games were averaged to form you overall seed, then you picked your alliance partners and played the operator controlled for the elimination rounds. The auto game also had slightly different rules (the field was divided into 4 sections, one for each team, center goal was worth 2 points, no ownership of goals, and only 30 seconds instead of 2 minutes). I would have liked to see it have the same rules though, with the exception of maybe staying 30 seconds instead of 2 minutes. Interaction and alliance partners would have made interesting strategy discussion, along with deciding which goals to pursue, as you couldn't adjust to the opponent's strategy afterwards. Scouting and pre-game strategy would become incredibly important.

[Donut]

I'm not sure what year the current sensors are from, I just know we have 2 current sensors sitting around from either 2004 or 2005.

How did you get an INS accurate enough to not be off by 2 meters in 15 seconds (this was what I was expecting to potentially get from the high end Analog Devices accelerometers)? You know, they could do that nice field position thing if they bring back those IR beacons from '04.

[Jherbie53]

If the field is as open as this years was, then during autonomous could there be a max Feet Per Second rule? The max FPS could be 8-10 FPS or something, but that all depends on the game and the field setup. I was watching web cast's of qualifying matches of Nationals and in three straight matches my teams robot was knocked over in autonomous. In the first two of those matches it looked like there should of been a high speed ramming called. Later, threw some communication with team members at Nationals, I found that anything goes in autonomous, even high speed ramming. I really haven't talked to anyone in person since before Nationals, so I might be interpreting it wrong and please correct me if I am. It's really hard for teams to stay encouraged when you tip over three straight matches.

[Lil' Lavery]

That sounds like it may be a center of gravity problem with the individual robot. Tipping/disabling/damage in autonomous was very limited from my expierience.
Also, I beleive there were still high speed ramming calls in auto (or there should have been), but there was a generic lack of them the whole season in both portions of the match.

[Donut]

I never saw a ramming penalty called once during any autonomous portion I saw of a match, but I also never saw any matches where I thought robots were moving fast enough to warrant it. As for a speed limit, I think that should only apply if you hit someone at that speed; there is no harm in charging at an opponent 20 ft/s if you slow down to 3 ft/s before you hit them.

[987HighRoller]

Originally Posted by Jherbie53

If the field is as open as this years was, then during autonomous could there be a max Feet Per Second rule? The max FPS could be 8-10 FPS or something, but that all depends on the game and the field setup. I was watching web cast's of qualifying matches of Nationals and in three straight matches my teams robot was knocked over in autonomous. In the first two of those matches it looked like there should of been a high speed ramming called.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the high speed ramming penalty was for defensive autonomous robots who rammed into stationary robots. If both robots are in motion, then i guess it's just the luck of the draw.

[Kristian Calhoun]

Originally Posted by 987HighRoller

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the high speed ramming penalty was for defensive autonomous robots who rammed into stationary robots. If both robots are in motion, then i guess it's just the luck of the draw.

Originally Posted by RULE<G22>

Intentional ROBOT - ROBOT Interaction - Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping
over, or entanglement of ROBOTs are not in the spirit of the FIRST Robotics Competition and are not
allowed. However, AIM HIGH is a highly interactive game, and some appropriate contact is allowed
subject to the following guidelines:
• Rule <R35> in Section 5.3.4 establishes ROBOT bumper zones. Any contact within this zone is
generally acceptable, with the exception of high speed long distance ramming. If two ROBOTs
choose not to use bumpers, and they contact such that simultaneous contact occurs both in and out of
the bumper zone, then this contact is considered within the bumper zone.
• Contact outside of the bumper zone is generally not acceptable, and the offending ROBOT will be
assessed a 5-point penalty, and may be disqualified from the match if the offense is particularly
egregious or if it results in substantial damage to another ROBOT. Incidental contact will not be
penalized. Contact outside the bumper zone that is a result of tipping caused by contact within the
bumper zone will be considered incidental contact.

There's the rule about robot contact/ramming. So what I infer from it is that as long as there is no robot damage/tipping caused intentionally by a defensive "juggernaut" robot during autonomous, no penalty will be assessed. At the regionals that I attended, no penalties for ramming in autonomous were given (that I can remember). However, I do not know what the calls were at the other regionals/divisions at the championships.

[Billfred]

I'm not sure if this one can be implemented cheaply enough to work in FRC, but after reading this thread, I was highly intrigued by some of the concepts in the video mentioned within.

Suppose that as part of the competition, teams could also (optionally) field a smaller, all-autonomous robot in addition to their regular robot. I imagine the robots being slightly bigger than an FVC robot in dimensions, and could possibly dip into the FRC kit motors if you were feeling frisky. (If you went this route, teams would still only have, say, two Fisher-Price motors for all of their combined robots.)

For example, imagine that a large supply of balls (or perhaps more valuable balls) was on the field in front of the player stations on each side of the field. A barrier to keep the FRC robots at bay would run across the full field, just at where the field gates are. Human players could introduce their team's autonomous robot into the blocked-off section to move the balls into their choice of position on the field. To keep with the safety mindset, robots would be required to have a two-second delay after being given instructions to start, to give human players time to push the button and get clear.

Hey, it could work, right?