Autonomous Strategies

[ExarKun666]

I have spent hours and hours trying to figure out strategies for autonmous, for our our robot, and I was wondering out of the strategies that I have thought of, which ones have other teams thought of. (The above categories are the 6 general categories of strategies I could think of, please give details )

[Ian Curtis]

Drive!Straight?turn!LEFT!?

(Seriously, start with moving. That's pretty much a necessary skill. After that the sky's the limit, but you've got make sure at the very least you drive away from the scary people holding the orbit balls!)

[PinionTwister]

If some teams use WindRiver and others use Labview, it will be difficult for alliance partners to assist with programming for basic moves in autonomous. The programmers will need to know both systems in order to help. I see this as an interesting twist from prior years.

We use Labview, if our alliance partners are using C++ it will be difficult for us to assist in moving in Autonomous as we have no experience! Just my $.02

[ExarKun666]

Originally Posted by PinionTwister

If some teams use WindRiver and others use Labview, it will be difficult for alliance partners to assist with programming for basic moves in autonomous. The programmers will need to know both systems in order to help. I see this as an interesting twist from prior years.

We use Labview, if our alliance partners are using C++ it will be difficult for us to assist in moving in Autonomous as we have no experience! Just my $.02

Ohhhh dang, that puts more stuff we programmers got to do, not that we had anything to do in the first place

[smurfgirl]

So here's an idea:
Program all of the ideas you thought of. Have a panel of switches (3 of them = 2^3 = 8 possibilities) so you can set the robot to whatever autonomous mode you want for that particular match, after talking to your alliance partners about strategy.

Our team has done something along these lines for the past two years, and the flexibility is great. I wish I could take credit for the idea and/or the programming, though.

[ExarKun666]

Originally Posted by smurfgirl

So here's an idea:
Program all of the ideas you thought of. Have a panel of switches (3 of them = 2^3 = 8 possibilities) so you can set the robot to whatever autonomous mode you want for that particular match, after talking to your alliance partners about strategy.

Our team has done something along these lines for the past two years, and the flexibility is great. I wish I could take credit for the idea and/or the programming, though.

Well last year, our team's rookie year, I developed the autonomous ideas, and programmed them.

[smurfgirl]

Originally Posted by ExarKun666

Well last year, our team's rookie year, I developed the autonomous ideas, and programmed them.

That's an awesome skill to have... something I should probably learn eventually.

Also, I'd like to recommend that you talk with your team's strategy sub-team about your ideas for autonomous strategy before you start coding them, just to make sure they mesh with the way they're expecting to play the game.

[thefro526]

We're thinking of having multiple evasion programs where we would take a different course each time. Maybe if we get the time we'll play with the camera and see if we can pin down an opposing trailer.

[ExarKun666]

Originally Posted by smurfgirl

That's an awesome skill to have... something I should probably learn eventually.

Also, I'd like to recommend that you talk with your team's strategy sub-team about your ideas for autonomous strategy before you start coding them, just to make sure they mesh with the way they're expecting to play the game.

I wish our team had a strategy team, or something that resembled a strategy team, but basically, right now strategy is me

[virtuald]

Shoot balls at the human sitting behind you trying to score, while running away.

[ExarKun666]

Originally Posted by virtuald

Shoot balls at the human sitting behind you trying to score, while running away.

wouldn't that be considered a distraction, or something...

[nathanww]

We're looking at an auto mode that basically drives away and uses the flags on the trailers to avoid hitting anything. We briefly considered trying to actually score, but decided that this would really just put us in a position of weakness(due to the difficulty in actually scoring autonomously and the stopping and restarting that would be neccesary to accomplish this)

[ExarKun666]

Originally Posted by nathanww

We're looking at an auto mode that basically drives away and uses the flags on the trailers to avoid hitting anything. We briefly considered trying to actually score, but decided that this would really just put us in a position of weakness(due to the difficulty in actually scoring autonomously and the stopping and restarting that would be neccesary to accomplish this)

Wow, our team actually thought of this ! However, we figured that shooting in a trailer would actually be easier then avoiding a trailer, especially with the unique floor surface.

[TimCraig]

Originally Posted by PinionTwister

We use Labview, if our alliance partners are using C++ it will be difficult for us to assist in moving in Autonomous as we have no experience! Just my $.02

Systems don't have to be programmed in the same language to cooperate. I don't think you're going to be making major programming changes between matches. Programs written in VB and C++ can get along happily on a single PC and different kinds of computers running different operating systems and programs written in a multitude of languages can get along quite happily on the Internet. You're going to arrive at the competion with a catalog (hopefully) of possible autonomous maneuvers and you'll need to confer with your partners to decide with one is most suitable for that match.

[Tom Line]

If experience serves as any kind of example, the last thing on earth you want to be doing is trying to make any type of major code change between matches.

I suspect you need to come to the table with all your autonomous modes programmed, and work out who will do what from there....

Has anyone else considered training the camera to chase the blue shirts of the judges.... and firing balls at them? We want to impress them with our accuracy .