My team (4221A) is going to the world competition in Anaheim. One of the issues we had was autonomous. We basically timed how long each motor would move with the wait block. Is there a better way to do autonomous?
please help me 
While programming by time is easiest, you lose accuracy when battery life runs low because the motors do not run at the same speed or have the same power.
If you have access to sensors (potentiometers are good for arms, shaft encoders for drivetrains, limit switches to prevent destroying your motors) and want to try slightly more challenging programming, your autonomous will be more accurate. There is plenty of sample code out there to get you started.
See you next month!
if you have no sensers, you can use the wall/goal as a realigner
go forward 700 (when you only need 500)
it hits the wall for 200 (doesnt move)
it backs up a bit
and then score
its still not as good as encoders
but its a last ditch method thats works better than your current one
Um but don’t do it for too long than needed or you will overheat your motors.
If you can get ahold of 2 quadratern (bad spelling, yes) encoders, then you can write a movestraight code, or maybe someone could coach you through on how to write one
Both EasyC and RobotC offer free and easy video tutorials that can help you program any autonomous you want, but you will need some quadrature encoders and a potentiometer.
Where (10 char)
In the “tutorials” section.
Here are the Official Intelitek Tutorials for the Cortex, and the PIC Controllers.
Here are the Official RobotC Tutorials for Vex, Teaching ROBOTC for VEX Video Trainer and VEX Cortex Video Trainer using ROBOTC.
Also, using Google to search for “Vex Robotics Tutorial”, finds a whole lot of You Tube and College Links…
i would try to utilize sensors for every movement of your robot in autonomous assuming you have the sensors to do this. also, if you have sensor and time limits on your motions in autonomous it will help you not to wreck your robot’s motors.
I would recommend having more than one autonomous for each zone too! Sometimes changing it up is a great thing!