Textbook For Success
The experienced mentors from Simbotics have created the following workshops for the benefit of all teams. We hope that they will be able to help others to become even more successful in the coming season.
- Drivetrain Design, featuring the Kitbot on Steroids covers the selection of a drivetrain, the key principles and reviews the potential Kitbot upgrades
- Robot Design covers the entire robot design process, discussing robots and games in general, design priorities and decisions, and design principles and techniques
- Running a Team discusses team organization, both during the January-February 'build season' and through the rest of the year
- Strategy deals with the strategic decisions to be made while designing a robot, as well as competition strategy (scouting, match planning, alliance selection, etc.)
- Mobility describes the different types of Robotics drive systems, some of the theory of designing a drive system, and some construction techniques and principles
- Pneumatics introduces the pneumatic components used in Robotics and some typical pneumatic mechanisms
- Omnidirectional Drive Systems dives into the advanced topic of drive systems which can move in any direction
- Mechanical Design covers a range of mechanical design principles and techniques
- Programming FRC Robots: CMU Camera goes into the details of using the provided CMU2 camera to track objects
-
Programming FRC Robots: PID Control discusses how to use Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control to achieve fast and accurate autonomous motion
Download Entire Textbook 20.6 mb
2009 Control System Workshops
- 2009 Control System & Beta Test Overview - An overview of the new FIRST control system.
- Control System Connectivity - How to connect the robot, driver station and programming computer.
- Comparing C and C++ - Explains the philosophical differences between C and C++ Programming. Also gives an overview of the syntax of objects in C++
- Introduction to C++ - Examples of C++ code segments and what they translate to on your robot, including basic control of joysticks, victors, relays, etc.
- LabVIEW Basics - A basic introduction to using LabVIEW for programming FRC robots.
- Simbot Prime, C++ Beta Test Code - The C++ code developed for teleoperated control of the robot. It includes examples of an Iterative Robot with one-joystick drive and simple arm control, as well as some convenience classes we wrote for double solenoids and the Logitech Dual Action Gamepad. Also included is an autonomous mode that tracks the green light and scores a tube on a spider leg, as well as a class for doing PID calculations 1114-style.
Video Tutorials
- Comparing C and C++ (Part1)
- Introduction to C++ for FRC (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)
- Introduction to PID for FRC (Part 1) (Part 2)
Other
- Kitbot on Steroids - a simple and effective drivetrain
- Controls - this is the archive of workshops given about the introduction of the 2009 controls system. Inculdes presentations about PID control and C++.
- Team Spotlight - Featuring 1114 (.mp3) - this is an episode of the EWCPcast, in which we were interviewed to discuss our team's inner operations