Programming Happenings

Next up, we will be focusing on the swerve drive, because in order to program motion based on what the camera sees, we need a drivetrain to program. Charles has put together a swerve drive example program, so we are just waiting for the drivetrain now, which the build team said will be done in a matter of days.

Since vision is somewhat complete, at least for now, I decided to help the padawans troubleshoot their issues today. The task of the day was to setup their VS Code development environment so that they can deploy code to robots successfully. I helped Noel with importing libraries and adding dependencies to the build path, and Megan with turning off firewalls and anti virus software that was blocking her driver station communications.

This week I got vision working!

It recognizes and follows only the reflective tapes, and returns information such as x and y coordinates, width and height. Dante and I wrote a formula to gauge the robot's distance from the target too. I've estimated the distance and angle range of the camera after talking with Seth (build team) about where to mount the camera on the robot. The last thing is integrate it into the robot code, which unfortunately isn't very easy.

This week has been more frustrating than last week, but Rene has helped keep everyone encouraged by taking breaks to do other activities. This has also helped bring the programming team together and get to know each other more.

Although I’m sure we have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few weeks, programming subteam is doing pretty well for now.

-Lilo H