<div>BTW, I'm sure I'm just one of many out-of-town people watching the ORC discussion. Wish I could have been there.</div>
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<div>I almost found someone to rebuild my robot in Dallas, and bring it out. I'm not sure how it would have done, but it should would have made a respectable showing.<br><br>
<div>I may need to add this to my 2009 schedule. :)</div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>Seems reasonable. The main point is that the robot must track its location<br>continuously, and that would seem to mitigate against a technique of stopping<br>
to take readings from time to time. Odometry is bound to drift over time,<br>especially in outdoor environments, of which a level asphalt parking lot<br>is probably as good as it gets. So ultimately some other form of correction<br>
is needed. However, as a sequence for learning, wheel encoder based odometry<br>is, I think, the right starting place, and we had a lot of success with<br>that at the outdoor contest last month.<br></blockquote>
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<div>I had a friend tell me he's planning on reading his compass (and GPS), then point the robot the correct direction, and let it run at full speed for a while, before reading the compass & GPS again to make a course correction. I'm pretty sure if I attempt to tell him how poorly that would work, it would only make him more determined to show me otherwise.</div>
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<div>While I think a robot that can raise & lower its compass would be pretty cool ("up periscope") I'm sure it would create a lot of extra complexity, and have a negative effect on robot performance. But, it would be great to see...</div>
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<div>Now, I need to finish reading through my "ORC Lessions Learned" e-mails.</div>
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<div>Steve</div>
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