Code Changes Leading up to the PvC Scrimmage

By Cooper

Task: Finalize code changes prior to the PvC scrimmage

Leading up to the scrimmage, many code changes happened, mostly in the area of auton. To start, I tried to run 10 runs of every auton path, to check reliability. Time and time again though, the robot would go off towards joneses, crash into the far wall, or knock over the wobble goal when placing it.

To address the robots tendency to not want to go straight forward, we wanted to start to use VUforia and the vision targets to help us know our relative angle. However, we had problems with VUforia, as it wouldn’t detect much past what was immediately in front of it. The problem probably has something to do with our abysmal lighting conditions on our field, and while there are solutions, we didn’t have time. So, we went analog and used a distance sensor on the front right of our robot, facing right. This was to basically just do wall following, with one ace up our sleeve. We decided to modify our existing movePID that uses the IMU, to make a moveGenericPID, where it could be used for more generic purposes, like this one. We pass the method our target distance, our current distance, plus all the other generic move variables, and with a bit of fiddling with input multipliers, it worked.

The next issue caught me off guard, and put me into a state of confusion. Or I guess rather. In all seriousness, all I needed to do was decrease the distance it went for the far. To go into a little more detail on the final issue, it was caused by multiple things at the same thing. Firstly, the arm that holds the wobble goal is shorter than the robot; its end is inside the circumference of the robot when the base and turntable are lined up. That lined up position is how we start, so it had been where the arm just turns to one side to drop it off. Even swung out, the wobble goal is still 40% over the robot, as to where the robot lets go of it and it topples over. We decided to fix it by turning the robot in the opposite direction the arm is turning, at the same time. Then we aren’t losing time to it, and it's a clean drop.

Next Steps

Given that we have attended to all outstanding issues prior to the scrimmage, the next steps mainly include testing the robot out during practice runs and being prepared to drive it through the week for all matches.