Tag Archive for 'Controller'

New FIRST robotics controller - Interviews and Opinions

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on May 26, 2008 in FIRST FRC, Robotics and labview. 0 Comments



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?

Technical overview of cRIO (Compact RIO) controller used in 2009 FRC competition

Published by Michael Aivaliotis on April 29, 2008 in FIRST FRC. 1 Comment



This video highlights the new Compact RIO hardware that will be used as the controller for the 2009 FIRST robotics competition in the FRC category.

National Instruments had a booth close to the pits at the 2008 FRC final championship in Atlanta. They built several robots demonstrating the capabilities of the new controller. One of the robots is shown here and the various components of the control hardware are explained.

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