A summary of why we chose to change control system

rmc_ctl_sys.md

Why switch?

Problems with old system

• Required Use of old software that had bugs, was no longer maintained and was poorly documented
• Delicate, expensive components
• Required a middleman controller to translate
• System involved maintaining 3 separate libraries in 2 languages on 3 devices
  • massive time investment
  • In addition, motor controllers and arduino had custom instruction sets we had to use
• encoders:
  • Previous system used hardware PID controllers
  • pid doesn't give much benefit when moving in sand/dust which shifts
  • encoders sometimes break,
    • making PID controller panic and stop the entire system from moving
    • we couldn't change this behavior as it's a part of the hardware

Benefits with new system

• We can eliminate the arduino from our control system
  • this makes programming and electrical's jobs easier, reduces power consumption, complexity, etc.
• We can do everything in Python
  • C++ is hard to teach
• New system is super cheap compared to old
• Can use same motor controllers and Tinkerboard (raspberry pi)

Problems with new system

• Software starting from scratch more or less
• Some components from old system will go unused
  • kangaroos will go unused
  • arduino will likely be repurposed