To avoid all of the hassles of dealing with robot placement and line of sight of the IR while in Hybrid mode, is it possible to create an IR receiver that plugs into the OI (under its own power) so that the robo-coach can just send the IR commands to the OI instead of an IR receiver mounted on the robot and connected to the RC or are the ports on the OI totally locked out during autonomous mode???
The OI data received by the robot while in autonomous mode is set to “all joysticks centered, no buttons pressed”. Control from the OI is not possible until teleoperated mode begins.
Any signaling device is allowed, as long as it complies with <R65> and <R69>. (Well, obviously it has to comply with all the rules, but those in particular have to do with the signaling device.)
[quote=<R65>]Active SIGNALING DEVICES shall:
use visible light, infrared communications, or sound as the transmission method – no other form of electro-magnetic radiation is permitted[/quote]
If you don’t like the IR boards from the kit, you could use different IR boards, or something in visible light (CMUcam?) or something using sound (voice recognition and a robocoach who yells really loudly? Actually that’s probably not allowed, because the robocoach is not a “device”. But you could have 4 prerecorded sounds, and a device that plays each sound based on which button is pressed.)