Autonomous end game

So we’ve had the autnomous longer poll but what about autonomouse at the end of the game, I know I have seen it discussed but don’t recall ever a poll. I would personally like to see it… what do you think?

That could be extremely interesting. Have the first 15 seconds and the last 15 seconds of a match be autonomous. It throws in more unknown variables and would be much harder to program, I would imagine. I would love to see that.

I would love to see it but what about all those teams that don’t or can’t do autonomous mode. Wouldn’t it be somewhat anti-Climatic for the end of the game? to see X amount of seconds a bunch of robots doing very little?

For those teams that simply don’t do it, it might encourage their programmers to take on the challenge of being able to successfully perform autonomously.

Our team actually discussed this when we were speculating the color hint at the 2006 Championship.

I’m not sure. It depends on how that would be worked out. Would your robot, using this year’s game as an example, be in the middle of scoring, then all of a sudden, it would stop and autonomous would take over? Would there still be autonomous at the beginning? Also, would the human operators have to step back? There would be some serious penalties if they didn’t. It would throw the whole game. Interesting…I can’t decide.:confused:

i vote YES.

I saw our programming team take a 5 minute break once, so i know that need more to do. :wink:

Personally I like the idea. I also think it would be cool if the beginning game auto mode was worth less then the end game. i. e. the 2004 or 2007 auto mode at the beginning with the Decisiveness of the 2006 auto mode at the end.

Last year I remember there being far more teams having successful autonomous modes. The amount of teams attempting to do autonomous mode is a function of how valuable it is.

I think it’d be neat to just have a simple one: have a white line demarking the ‘end zone’ that robots need to get into at the end of the game, maybe with a vision target near it as well. The white line could be used with the little infrared sensors we’ve had in the past.

The rule would be written like this:
For every robot that is contained in an end zone at the end of the game that was not in the end zone at the beginning of the final autonomous phase, that team’s alliance scores 10 points.

So camping in the end zone wouldn’t score you points, you’d HAVE to get there autonomously. It’d also open up defensive autonomous modes: teams might camp in front to block the opposing alliance from being able to earn bonus points.

I’m not sure. It depends on how that would be worked out. Would your robot, using this year’s game as an example, be in the middle of scoring, then all of a sudden, it would stop and autonomous would take over? Would there still be autonomous at the beginning? Also, would the human operators have to step back? There would be some serious penalties if they didn’t. It would throw the whole game. Interesting…I can’t decide.

I think the ideal implementation would have a 5-10 second pause between the end of teleoperated and the final autonomous mode. If you don’t feel your robot is in a ‘safe’ position during this 5-10 second phase, you can hit the e-stop.

Too many variables to consider at the end of the game, based on where you are what direction you are pointed etc, etc, it could be done, but I’m just saying that if it was so decisive you would see the drivers for so many teams trying to set their robot up so that their robot worked autonomously the best for the last 20 seconds of manned periods, and there would be those without autonomous programming who would just park themselves in the percieved way of the opponent’s autonomous mode.

Not that it couldn’t be done, but I think it would detract a lot and not be as interesting, and make autonomous 10 times harder, and looking at the autonomous from this year, it looks like we could really use that.

I do not think autonomous at the end of the game is very practical. I would be a big fan if the GDC was some how able to make it possible without having to jump over canyons.

The thing that is so great about autonomous is that it is very consistent, and you do not have to deal with too many elements when you are positioning your robot in the very beginning of the match and when you are choosing where to score. If you made autonomous at the end, you would have to some how waste seconds of your teleoperated period to set yourself up, or have to work harder and incorporate more sensors to where all of your sensors work together and get the task accomplished.

Add an extra autonomous period at the end - Sure.
Move the autonomous period to the end - NO.

I’m for it, but I don’t see it very likely. But than again, the game will be different next year, so all the variables are completely different.

Why end the match 15 seconds early?

It could be interesting if any robots behind a certain line at the end of teleop went into autonomous mode, but robots outside of that area did not, and then any robot in autonomous mode would have some multiplier on points scored during that period (i.e. game pieces scored by manual robots are worth 1 point each in the last 15 seconds, game pieces scored by autonomous robots are worth 5). Could lead to interesting strategies.

If you made autonomous at the end, you would have to some how waste seconds of your teleoperated period to set yourself up, or have to work harder and incorporate more sensors to where all of your sensors work together and get the task accomplished.

Too many variables to consider at the end of the game, based on where you are what direction you are pointed etc, etc, it could be done, but I’m just saying that if it was so decisive you would see the drivers for so many teams trying to set their robot up so that their robot worked autonomously the best for the last 20 seconds of manned periods,

I don’t think this is the case. If you had an infrared emitter or vision target in the bonus zone, then all teams would have to do in autonomous is spin around until they find the target, then drive towards it. Already in autonomous teams have to acquire the vision target, so that isn’t terribly difficult. As a programmer, I can tell you that when the camera is working and you’ve got KW’s code, it is actually very easy to program with.

To encourage teams from spending time in matches setting up and rather spend time in build period programming robust autonomous modes, an even better idea would be to have 3 lights above your alliance station, spread across the field. At the end of teleoperated period, a single randomly-selected light will light up, and THAT is the zone where you receive bonus points.

This is a very interesting topic. I would like to see more autonomous but there are a few problems that could come up when at the end of the game.

  1. Doesn’t the RC need to be reset to re-engage autonomous mode?
  2. How would the RC differentiate between the beginning autonomous and ending autonomous?
  3. You wouldn’t see any last second efforts to race back to your side of the field and jump on a ramp like in the last two years

To encourage teams from spending time in matches setting up and rather spend time in build period programming robust autonomous modes, an even better idea would be to have 3 lights above your alliance station, spread across the field. At the end of teleoperated period, a single randomly-selected light will light up, and THAT is the zone where you receive bonus points.

I like this idea but how would a robot differentiate between the red alliance side and blue alliance side. Do you remember the teaser during the final matches on Einstein last year? The red alliance home zone could have a red light and a blue alliance home zone could have a blue light and have the robot already knows which alliance it is on so it knows where to go.

You are forgetting about the fact that there will be 5 other robots and any number of game pieces and field elements to negotiate around. Navigating autonomously when you don’t have prior knowledge of the terrain is extremely complicated. SImply finding a target and driving to it wont work. Over the last two years it has become apparent how much trouble teams have even when they know approximately where the target will be.

While I don’t know for sure I would tend to assume that the competition port has an extra pin that could be used, other wise it could be taken care of in the default code.

Over all I think this is a very cool idea however it is also an incredibly impractical one. We see enough robots sit still at the begining of the match, why have it happen again at the end?

This is an idea I had earlier this season I’m a huge fan of. Have an option at the end of the game where a team can hit a button of some sort that will put their robot into autonomous control. Teams can stay in manual control and try to finish out the game; however teams that can successfully do the end task autonomously get a 3X multiplier to what they just scored.

Even better, you could set this up to be possible anytime during a match, so that during it you could go into auto-control to get your huge score bonus, then go back to manual mode (obviously this would require some new additions to the field system).

As a programmer I can tell you that doing much more than we did this year in autonomous would require more than 15 seconds and probably more time to program. Understand that there are ways of finding the light that don’t involve spinning your robot in any way, but also don’t allow for a full 360 of motion. Plus, again what if something is in the way, etc, etc etc. If we had another 2-4 weeks to do this, I would say, sure maybe we can get something worked out. But as a programmer, I know that when you say, “it’d be simple”, really what you mean is that it seems like it’d be simple but it ends up being way more work that it was really worth.

Also, I don’t really see much of a pay off of it being at the end.

I’d love to see this, it seems like a barrel of fun.

  1. As far as I know… No. Autonomous is dictated by the IFI Field Control. When the Field is set to Auton, the bots are on Auton.

  2. The code has 3 modes at the moment – “Initiate”, which is a sort of “pre-auton, start up the camera/etc” mode, then “Auton”, which is activated by field control, then “Teleoperated”, which is also activated by field control. To differentiate between another auton mode and the first one, add another mode and call it “auton2” or “autonend”, etc.

  3. Perhaps next year’s game won’t involve ramps. Dave’s already mentioned Tangential Quadrilaterals, so I wouldn’t be suprised if we get a major change in the game for '08.

This isn’t anything you don’t already have to deal with though. In both 2006 and 2007, other robots would actively attempt to block you, block off your vision, shake the rack, as well as knock you off course. Opposing robots would be aimed to hit you. That would be a point of failure of many autonomous modes, and would be one of the higher-level challenges for teams looking to make theirs more robust.

And I’m serious when I say “it’d be simple”. The easiest would be to simply have your robot drive forward slowly for 15 seconds and have your driver pre-aim at the end of the match. It might hit another robot, but that’s a problem in autonomous as it is now as well. For a bit more difficulty, make a simplifying assumption that the light will always be in view (if it is mounted where it was in Aim High, this wouldn’t be a problem), and then you can do the slow spin and acquire. Much more difficulty might be to detect impacts and attempt to drive around them.

Here are some assumptions a potential autonomous-writer can make to make it easier, and removal of each of these bumps it to a higher-level
-There are no robots in my way
-The robot is pointed the correct direction
-There are no game field elements in my way
-I can ram into the end wall at low speed without damaging my robot

You don’t have to make a autonomous mode that detects other robots and field elements, avoids them, and pirouettes it’s way to the end zone. You can make a simple little one, and if your robot is not pointed the right way at the end of the match, just hit the e-stop before final autonomous starts.

If you look at 2006, there were several levels of autonomous:
-Drive-forward defenders
-Drive-forward, then aim again defenders
-Stay-in-place shooters that were pre-aimed
-Shooters that drove a little, then shot
-Shooters that could drive across the field, re-acquire the camera, then shoot
-Shooters that, while shooting, could detect an impact, stop shooting, re-aim, then shoot

IMO, lack of participation in autonomous mode this year was because it was simultaneously perceived as 1) not worth it and 2) very difficult. If you make it worth going for, then teams will, at the very least, make a drive-forward mode. Aim High had plenty of participation in autonomous, at least so far as the drive-forward modes were concerned.

The pay-off would be to have a mode that is at its base level slightly more challenging than drive-forward that isn’t JUST drive-forward. Plus, real engineers have to deal with variability, why don’t our programmers?