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[DPRG] DPRG ORG 08 Photos
Subject: [DPRG] DPRG ORG 08 Photos
From: dpa
dpa at io.isem.smu.edu
Date: Wed May 14 20:56:16 CDT 2008
Howdy,
Great analysis from Dean, Randy, Dale, Erik and John of
Things Learned This Weekend. Dale, excellent webpage!
I'll add a couple of general comments.
There are several robots (Erik, John, Robert) that
seem ready for obstacle avoidance challenges, which
present a whole new set of problems to solve.
>From the above, however, it seems that mechanical/drive
issues, mechanical/steering issues, and encoder/velocity
control issues were identified for a number of robots
with the challenges this weekend.
These probably need to be thought about at this point more
than the navigation/location behaviors which depend on them.
That is, driving with controlled speed and accurate steering
might be more important at this stage than navigating well
and hitting the target accurately.
Robert and I went back to the parking lot after dinner last
Saturday and played some with jBot, and talked about PID and
velocity control as a more basic use of encoders than odometry
and navigation, which can be added later. It might be time to
re-address these areas as a group. Something to ponder.
I'll also second Jon Hyland's comment:
>With my mini-sumo Seeker 2, if I was pushing the start button when it is
> powered up, it drops into a text-based menu system, where I can read and
> write timing constants from EEPROM, test sensors and motors, and tweak
> thresholds.
I do a similar thing except that the robot comes up in a text-based
menu system for setting values and so forth, and one of the menu
items is "Go" to start the robot behaviors. jBot has a 20x2 line
LCD and five push buttons to navigate the menus and adjust the
values. I saw several robots Saturday with similar arrangements.
Something like that is really handy for testing and setting up the
robot, and especially the ability to turn subsystems on and off when
debugging robot behaviors, set PID parameters, etc, etc.
I think almost all the robots that competed with maybe the exception
of Red Car and AJ have some sort of encoders on the wheels or motors.
Is this true? Perhaps it would be good to collect our knowledge on
encoders and counters and interrupts and other similar low-level
control techniques that folks are using on their robots.
best regards,
dpa
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