Robot Arm C

[iwonder]

I don not have the rules yet, so are we allowed to use autonomous robots, or is it human-electronic control only?

I haven't read anything in the rules that would require manual control, or refute automatic control, but obviously it[automatic control] is not expected, and may take come explanation at competitions when the Supervisor wants to know what frequency you're on, or how you plan to control said arm.

[sachleen]

I don not have the rules yet, so are we allowed to use autonomous robots, or is it human-electronic control only?

I haven't read anything in the rules that would require manual control, or refute automatic control, but obviously it[automatic control] is not expected, and may take come explanation at competitions when the Supervisor wants to know what frequency you're on, or how you plan to control said arm.

You would be able to explain it in the documentation (sections 4.a.iv and 4.c.i) but yeah, I don't see anything that says it can't be autonomous, although it seems like an unnecessary effort to make it so.

[illusionist]

Unnecessary? I haven't started testing this out yet, but if I was using Lego NXT (unlikely, but still possible), then programming it would be much, much simpler than trying to control it via a transmitter.

[iwonder]

But if you use standard(hi-torque of course) rc servos, it would be significantly simpler to put a rc transmitter on it than to do a fully autonomous robot.

[sachleen]

Unnecessary? I haven't started testing this out yet, but if I was using Lego NXT (unlikely, but still possible), then programming it would be much, much simpler than trying to control it via a transmitter.

I can see something being placed just slightly off and an autonomous robot being unable to grab it because it's not at the coordinates it expected. That could be solved by using sensors to see where objects were... or you could just put in same amount of time to practice it. I think it would still be best to do it yourself until it's second nature.

[iwonder]

Now you're at crossroads, while manual control would let you account for supervisor error in the setup, an autonomous robot will provide significantly more coordination and fluidity, and look at industry, most robots put on plant floors are autonomous, which would indicate that there is a definite benifit to an autonomous robot over a manually controlled one(the pay for a worker to run the robot vs the autonomous controls would be about the same).

If you're still concerned about item placement(which should be at most 2 mm off, in my mind) there are vision systems used in industry to locate objects, which could be put on said robot, albeit with some difficulty. However I do not believe that the parts would be placed far enough off for an autonomous arm to care either way.

[bearasauras]

iwonder, I would be very interested in seeing your Robot Arm in action.

[iwonder]

For the record... My coach runs a company that does industrial robotics and controls... I have a job doing industrial automation for things like drilling rigs and shipboard controls. It's not cheating... Just experience and supplies

[sachleen]

Now you're at crossroads, while manual control would let you account for supervisor error in the setup, an autonomous robot will provide significantly more coordination and fluidity, and look at industry, most robots put on plant floors are autonomous, which would indicate that there is a definite benifit to an autonomous robot over a manually controlled one(the pay for a worker to run the robot vs the autonomous controls would be about the same).

If you're still concerned about item placement(which should be at most 2 mm off, in my mind) there are vision systems used in industry to locate objects, which could be put on said robot, albeit with some difficulty. However I do not believe that the parts would be placed far enough off for an autonomous arm to care either way.

Yeah, I thought about that, but another benefit in the industry is the robots are doing the same thing all day. You need this to do something once without error. In a production line, i'd imagine everything would be placed in the exact same spot every time so the robot would never miss, here it'll be slightly different every time and you'd have to come up with a more complicated solution to account for it. I would love to see an autonomous bot do this, but I don't think anybody will.

There's a video on YouTube of a bot with an arm, and a kid has a replica of the arm as the control, so as he moves the joints of the control arm, the robot's arm moves in the same way. That'd probably be the solution for this event, I think.

[illusionist]

Sure, but that is immensely difficult for most teams (including myself, as I do not have the programming abilities). And also, (this is mainly to Chalker, yes I realize "this isn't the place for official clarifications" =P) if we use servo motors like they do in the "master and slave" control systems, will they be counted towards the total number of motors?