BIG IMPORTANT STUFF

Navigation => “intelligent”:

Problems:
• The robot (after getting a cube) will navigate to a wall marker then spin around in a circle looking for the bucket, if it can’t see the bucket it will go in a straight line in a direction that is normally not the bucket.
• It almost always finds the wall marker that is furthest away from the bucket because this is the one that comes into view first and so actually drives pointing away from the bucket towards a distant wall marker.

Suggested improvements:
• Look for the bucket with a higher resolution.
• If at a wall marker you knowish where in the arena you are, turn towards the bucket even if you can’t see it. NOTE: it is better to go into the area than into a wall
• Don’t head towards the wall marker furthest from the bucket keep rotating to see the marker next to the bucket.
• At the start of the round the robot should do its cube search the other way (clockwise) to save time.
• In looking-for-thing-mode only do 270 degree turn before driving. The robot rarely sees anything on second turn. The 720 degree turn often results in the robot hitting the wall because that was it's initial direction.

Would be nice:
• Navigating to the wall that is not our zone is dangerous because if we drop the cube we could score another team points.

Beware Walls

Problem:
• The robot will hit the wall and knock the cube off
• Sometimes the robot will spin and drive into a wall.
• The robot if facing right wall will turn anit-clockwise.

Suggested improvement
• Don’t drive as close to the walls. Note: when approaching the wall at a steep angle the reduction in distance driven to the wall needs to be greater. Based on limited testing for a head on approach take off 0.1m from what the robot does. For an approach of +30° increase this to 0.2m and for +60° to 0.4m.
• If the robot can see the RH wall spin the other way.

Would be nice:
• If possible have some way of knowing if you are facing a wall and don’t drive into it.

Cube depletion

Problem:
• The robot will happily find the first 2 cubes and then has depleted the cubes its field of view

Suggested improvement
• As the number of cubes collected increases, increase the resolution, and the distance the robot
moves in random search.
• When at bucket drive out further into the area

SMALLER STUFF

Obscuring the bucket

Problem:
• If the robot drops a cube in the zone it will then push that cube towards the bucket and obscure the marker on the bucket end.

Suggested improvement
• Be more able to navigate of wall markers
• Give up on finding the bucket after a certain time and just leave cube in zone

Giving up

Suggested improvement
• I’m not sure if there is code for this but the robot should give up on a cube if it is unable to get it after a certain number of tries. It is likely that another robot has it at that point.

Jamming

Problem
• The robot doesn’t get its self-unstuck

Suggested improvement
• The robot should now have a gyro use this to see if the robot did move by some amount when you think it should. Then have an unjam function

Running away without cubes

Problem:
• The robot from testing ~1/12 cube picks will fail to pick up a cube go back check if the cube is still there, not see it for reasons unknown and then go through the motions of finding the bucket.

Suggested improvement:
• Check for cube with higher resolution, we really need to be sure that it isn’t there.

General Notes

Good job, code works it just needs to work faster. We waste a lot of time looking and not seeing, maybe better to up the default resolution to be able to see further. The robot should be more aggressive about driving and do less turning.