I wanted to discuss operation strategy at the competition. What are you going to do in terms of control setup and piloting at the competition?
Telekinesis… and electronics…
Lots of very very loud screams and gutteral grunts.
We usually use two joysticks for driving, and a bunch of messy, unlabeled buttons and pots to contorl the scoring unit. The driver side is easy. In order to operate the arm, you need to have made the controller. We also usually forget what does what function after the season is over…
We will probably use 2 joysticks for the driver and 1 joy stick and some switches for the operator
yeah, we have a jedi on our team this year, so our robot will just look like a big box with a stick. we’re just going to plug out op. int. into the comptition stuff. we won’t even have have joy sticks
we will have our omni-wheeled bot controlled FPS style, one joystick for translation, and the other for twist, the arm driver will have 3 buttons that go to preset heights and a joystick to fine tune those heights if needed, we will also add some buttons for automated tasks, if i can get the robot for long enough to get things done
ours is gonna be interesting…
i’m planning on adding a button to the controls that will allow the driver to flip control of teh wheels 180 degrees; so when you’re facing backwards, the controls will behave as if the robot were facing forward, then all the driver has to do is flip the switch and put it back to the way it was. 
as of right now we will have one joystick for our driver and ethier two for our arm or a xbox 360 controller (hoping for the latter as it is eaiser for me to operate:p ) because our arm is wayyy more complecatied than our driving sytem… 17 days left guys!!!
Control box for the ramps, etc.
Two joysticks for driving with a little twist…
Our programmer/slave of EasyC has come up with two different drive modes. For our standard tank steer, the driver can use both sticks as normal. But if the driver wants to use our “Arcade” mode (think flight simulator controls), all they have to do is use one joystick and pull the trigger to control the drive.
We will use the Logitech gamepad with the Chicklet, and we are making a custom OI button panel to control the mechanisms. I’ll post a picture when we have it finished.
We’ll be using a 3 axis joystick for the drive. Left and right strafes, twisting the joystick rotates the robot.
For the arm, we’ll have a rotary switch with 5 preset heights, floor, bottom, middle, top, and envelope (basically for when we are driving around so we can’t get nabbed with appendage penalties. Gah the appendages!).
Then we’ll have 3 analog joysticks for the wrist, base arm, and forearm, and a rocker switch for opening and closing the hand.
Well, my code will copy the values coming from the operator interface to the pwm output variables, and let the IFI code do the rest!
But seriously, we’re doing pretty much the same thing we’ve done for years. Two joysticks for the drive and a pile of buttons and switches for the scoring mechanism.
It’s what’s between the RC’s radio and the Victors that’s going to be impressive.
JBot
We have a mecanumbot =) Direction will be controlled by a joystick, and our programmer demands a turntable for rotation.
I have no idea about the arm. Probably some haphazard arrangement of pots and buttons.
We’re trying to bring back an idea the team used a few years back: Control via jetpack style arm-backpack. It worked the first time, so it shouldn’t be too hard to re-invent it.
A joy stick for each side of the drive motors. Quite possibly 2 joy sticks for the manipulator (or 1 and some buttons). We’re also going with a big red button (probably an easy button) with a cover for ramp deployment.
We have used one joystick for driving in the past and plan to this year also. Also usually an assortment of two position switches, three position, and sometimes rocker switches. This year we have a couple different things going on plus the board is looking good for once this year haha. We try to aim for making it easy for the operators and not making them have to look down too much to see what they are doing because then they aren’t watching the field which can be a very bad thing.
Driver:
Steering Wheel for left right
Joystick for throttle
2 of-on switches for ramp deployment
Operator:
1 Joystick with uber-buttons.
we’re using:
steering wheel
joystick for throttle
two joysticks for arm control
a big switch for ramp deployment and lift
we may switch back to tank drive because the steering whell is having some issues, but no matter what we’re using all 4 ports…
Ours is 100% autonomous so we dont have to control it, were just gonna plug in the OI and radio and let her rip.
Our current plan (subject to change) is to have only 1 driver, along with the HP, a student tactician, and the coach. The driver will use an XBOX controller – 1 JS to drive, the A/B/X/Y buttons for floor/lower/middle/upper, and the triggers for open/close. We’ll also have two buttons on the OI board which must be pressed simultaneously to deploy the ramps.