1519 - Video of "3 Ball Scoring" in Autonomous

[Ken Streeter]

With our first regional tournament, the Granite State Regional, starting in just a few days, we decided to post a video of our robot scoring 3 balls in autonomous mode. We'd also like to thank Team 1512 for allowing us to use their indoor, heated practice field! We'd have never been able to get this autonomous program working without the use of their field.

The video is now available on the team's webpage at http://www.mechanicalmayhem.org or http://www.team1519.org

You can go directly to the page with the video on it at http://www.mechanicalmayhem.org/teamvideos.asp

Enjoy!

PS: Oh, and yes we know that we're scoring down the wrong side of the field -- that scoring direction was simply more convenient with where we set up the driver station, as only one side of the field was marked for ball starting positions. Also our practice robot doesn't have legal bumpers on it -- don't worry, we've built those too and they'll be on the robot at GSR and the NC regional...

[Chris_Elston]

Great work guys!

Shoot...KEEP going. Drive over the bump and kick two more.

You're robot started moving at 0.08 in the video and last ball was kicked at 0.18. You've got a few more seconds left.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Great work guys!

Shoot...KEEP going. Drive over the bump and kick two more.

You're robot started moving at 0.08 in the video and last ball was kicked at 0.18. You've got a few more seconds left.

Although that would be pretty awesome, we don't like going over the bump with our pneumatic wheels first because the omni wheels land hard on the floor and risk break. When we go over the bump backwards the pnuematic wheels "bounce" a slight bit allowing for shock absorption on the floor.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Great work guys!

Shoot...KEEP going. Drive over the bump and kick two more.

You're robot started moving at 0.08 in the video and last ball was kicked at 0.18. You've got a few more seconds left.

Or they could add a delay to the beginning to give some time for the two robots in front of them to accomplish any autonomous actions without balls flying at them.

[Ian Curtis]

Sweet! I imagine you guys will be on the field well into Saturday.

And two spins to make it over the bump would look pretty awesome too!

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Great work guys!

Shoot...KEEP going. Drive over the bump and kick two more.

You're robot started moving at 0.08 in the video and last ball was kicked at 0.18. You've got a few more seconds left.

I thought about this, but I'm not sure that with the current program we are within our frame perimeter for 2 seconds between kicks... meaning we may have to slow this down to follow the rules. Theoretically speaking, one could kick 7 balls in auto, but we'll have to see what's practical.

One of the programmers may have to correct me on this, but I believe all of these kicks are below 80% of our full kicking strength - we can kick quite a bit harder! I believe we can get a ball to land a distance into the "near" zone, when we have our bumper against the alliance wall of the "far" zone. We've also had some success with kicking two balls simultaneously - they're not perfectly accurate, but one normally clears one bump, while the other bounces over a second.

Now, to humble our robot some... This video was not the first take! This video was the last of a set of videos we took while tweaking the kick strength and driving distance of our far-zone autonomous mode. This was probably... the third, fourth or fifth take of the most recent auto mode revision. That said, we quite consistently get two balls into the goal! I'm eager to see what improvements we can make to our auto mode... whether it be added reliability with three and/or a ball or two from the mid-zone!

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Great work guys!

Shoot...KEEP going. Drive over the bump and kick two more.

You're robot started moving at 0.08 in the video and last ball was kicked at 0.18. You've got a few more seconds left.

OK, Just FYI, last night we tightened up the timing a bit on the first three kicks to gain nearly 2 more seconds. We then tested autonomous bump traversal and decided it was safe enough. (Well, as long as nobody is doing sit-ups on the other side of the bump.)

After that, adding two more kicks for in the mid-zone wasn't tricky. We haven't been able to test out the complete program yet, as we don't have a full field at our regular practice area, but we'll try it out today at the Granite State Regional...