Field Calibration?

VEX IQ General Discussion General Discussion
1

At the last competition my team went to, the autonomous program didn’t go quite as planned. It was working perfectly and consistently at my own field at home, but completely failed in the actual competition. The degrees, parameters, and encoders were completely messed up. It couldn’t even high hang! I saw that several other teams also faced the issue with the different field, causing their autonomous programs to gain less than 10% of their normal point score. Our fields are exactly the same, so there shouldn’t have been an issue. After the competition, my team and I came to the conclusion that the competition board might have been more used, worn out, possibly making it more slippery. But not all boards are the same. So, we don’t know how much the margin of error will be on any given board.

I am wondering if one solution for this (I’m not sure if it exists) is something I heard about a while back. Essentially, we have the robot run a sequence of events on any given field, which allows the robot to calibrate itself with the field. It adjusts parameters and speed if necessary, such that the program still works properly. I don’t know how to program this field calibration (if it really works). Could anyone please adivse?

2

if everybody was having that problem and it was working fine before the match then it was probably the matches fault

3

I know, but we can’t really control whether or not the competition board will be accurate. That’s why I’m wondering if there is a way to get the program to work even if the board has issues.

4

I don’t think that there is a way to fix that

5

Oh ok. Thanks anyway.

6

I do not believe there is any such field calibration program that will make your robot’s autonomous work all the time. And even if there were, it would probably require a lot of sensors and a pretty advanced level of programming. What you can do is improve your the movement of your robot - use things like PID to improve the consistency of turns and linear movements. Stay far away from using delays to time your movements. Make your movement as smooth and controlled as possible so that you can reduce the effects of external factors on your autonomous.