VI Shots

The big announcement this year at the FIRST robotics finals in Atlanta was the new robot controller from National Instruments. This new controller called cRIO runs a real-time OS and can be programmed using LabVIEW. The power of this new technology will open the door for new and more interesting challenges for future FIRST competitions.One area that is underdeveloped in the FRC category of the competition is the autonomous mode. This is in contrast to FLL which is mostly autonomous. Hopefully we will see some interesting games ahead.

In this video VI Shots interviews Ray Almgren who leads the worldwide academic relations program for National Instruments. We also interview several mentors and students to get their feedback on this change in direction for next years competition. Teams 2023, 1739, 47, 107 and 2053 are featured.

Photo taken by Deirdre of my interview with Ray Almgren

Are you on a team? What’s your opinion on the new hardware and LabVIEW?

Resources:
• Download Video
• VI Shots Video: NITRO - Ball shooting cRIO powered FIRST Robotics demo bot
• VI Shots Video: Technical overview of cRIO (Compact RIO) controller used in 2009 FRC competition

Related:

• Technical overview of cRIO (Compact RIO) controller used in 2009 FRC competition
• NITRO - Ball shooting cRIO powered FIRST Robotics demo bot
• FIRST Selects National Instruments CompactRIO for Next-Generation Robot Control System
• LabVIEW helps Virginia Tech team win third place in DARPA Urban Challenge
• Microsoft Robotics Studio