Oops, sorry Phipi, I initially posted the wrong video!
Sometimes when viewing several different videos on Youtube, the URL doesn't change. I was looking at the right video, but I cut and pasted the unchanged URL, which was the Falcon launch.
Took me a few minutes to catch that mistake. A thousand apologies, nothing close to a figure 8. Although the twin booster landings was a perfect figure 11.
Carol's Blockly code appears to be doing at least the Proportional portion of PID to measure the distance and adjust the wheel speed proportionally. It would be interesting to watch several consecutive orbits (LEDs and long exposures, Carol?) to see how consistent they are. When I did Spiderbot, I used a Sharp sensor as a simple go/no-go (actually seen or unseen) to decide to walk straight (seen) or spin (unseen). Not proportional at all but it worked well enough. Git 'er done!
The robot goes around the the tubes several times in the original video. Is that what you are asking? There are indicator LEDs on top of the robot
showing what it is looking at at the time. I will make a longer one though and see if I can get a better shot of the Pings laser lighting up the tubes.
You will notice it always leaves the area between the tubes in the opposite direction it entered, hence a reliable figure eight movement.
Good first effort. IMO your sensors should be well in front of your wheel axle so that when you rotate, you instantly change the distance. That works well for wall-followers, which is pretty much what you're doing with a cylindrical wall. A larger diameter cylinder will be easier to track, of course.
Whit was the last Parallaxian to post a figure 8, and that was over a YEAR ago! The only more recent one came from a Brit in the Picaxe forum, and that was still 8 months ago.
George Sutton PM'ed me about the forum slowing down, and by golly he's right. A lot of us have been spending more time on Facebook than the forum lately. Nothing wrong with FB but by golly we gotta get some more robots doing some figure 8ing. Carol has gone on to ballet robots (yes seriously) but maybe together we can re-invigorate robotics witrh some new figure 8s. What say ye, Whit & Carol? Jon & Tommy? Ken & Keith? Duane... duane... duane...?
Ken & team also spend a lot of time on FB, bolstering the Blockly & BlocklyProp groups. Just a different way to reach folks. People may be spending the same amount of time chatting about projects, just now distributed between FB and forums. So if you're not on FB it may appear that people are slowing down. Quite the opposite for Carol: she was churning out more robots than ever these past few months, between robot ballet performances and writing articles for SERVO. She sets the bar impressively high!
Of course we'd love to see your robot in action in any form!
Quite simply, there ARE no rules. Our original intent of the Fig 8 challenge was to demonstrate dead reckoning. More specifically, accuracy and consistency in repeating a left full circle then a right full circle. It was a lot harder before the Feedback 360 servo (with its newfangled built-in encoder) came along! So the times they are a-changing. We've seen many interesting robots and creative interpretations of figure 8. Martin_H did a very memorable one (outside the 9 dots) where his robot arm DREW a figure 8. Tommy Tailspin's rudder robot rode atop a Parallax S2 robot as it did a figure 8. Some people have added secondary actions during or after the figure 8. So just have fun and show us what your bot looks like and does.
This robot chassis is actually a freelance job (praise the Lord!) and I figured I'd "8" it before I add any proprietary stuff. Not my best effort, but it's a fairly legit 8, best I could do in 5 minutes. I had to post something! It's a backwards tricycle, the two big front wheels just coast along and the small rear wheel is driven & steered using one regular servo and one CR servo. The coolest thing is that scrolling LED badge hastily taped on top, my latest $5 eBay score: https://www.ebay.com/itm/293026885747
Comments
-Phil
Sometimes when viewing several different videos on Youtube, the URL doesn't change. I was looking at the right video, but I cut and pasted the unchanged URL, which was the Falcon launch.
Took me a few minutes to catch that mistake. A thousand apologies, nothing close to a figure 8. Although the twin booster landings was a perfect figure 11.
Here is my example for the class...
Whit: Is that CBA robot still in your flock? I can't recall if it ever did an 8.
Right now I want to duplicate what Carol did with my S3 and LaserPING)))s in Blockly. The challenge is still fresh!
showing what it is looking at at the time. I will make a longer one though and see if I can get a better shot of the Pings laser lighting up the tubes.
You will notice it always leaves the area between the tubes in the opposite direction it entered, hence a reliable figure eight movement.
https://picaxeforum.co.uk/threads/latest-robot.31175/
George Sutton PM'ed me about the forum slowing down, and by golly he's right. A lot of us have been spending more time on Facebook than the forum lately. Nothing wrong with FB but by golly we gotta get some more robots doing some figure 8ing. Carol has gone on to ballet robots (yes seriously) but maybe together we can re-invigorate robotics witrh some new figure 8s. What say ye, Whit & Carol? Jon & Tommy? Ken & Keith? Duane... duane... duane...?
I enjoy the FB posts a lot! I usually don't respond on the public posts, certain people I know feel obligated to join in and it's just awkward.
Shawn A.
Perfect! Get ~20 robots in line, filling up the figure 8 pattern so the paths overlap & intersect. Inspired by this...
Quite simply, there ARE no rules. Our original intent of the Fig 8 challenge was to demonstrate dead reckoning. More specifically, accuracy and consistency in repeating a left full circle then a right full circle. It was a lot harder before the Feedback 360 servo (with its newfangled built-in encoder) came along! So the times they are a-changing. We've seen many interesting robots and creative interpretations of figure 8. Martin_H did a very memorable one (outside the 9 dots) where his robot arm DREW a figure 8. Tommy Tailspin's rudder robot rode atop a Parallax S2 robot as it did a figure 8. Some people have added secondary actions during or after the figure 8. So just have fun and show us what your bot looks like and does.
It's a parade!