For the 2025-2026 DECODEâ„¢ season, our team had to engineer a robot capable of accurately moving and launching wiffle balls (Artifactsâ„¢) into the scoring zone. Additionally, we had to program the autonomous period to rely heavily on high precision movement and minimal drift, allowing the robot to score without user input.
The primary hurdle was mechanical unreliability during high speed strafing. To resolve this, I advocated for and integrated goBilda Rhino wheels, dramatically improving the friction coefficients of our drivetrain. Additionally, I implemented PIDF tuning on our launcher's motors, drastically improving throughput and accuracy.
By relying on dead wheel odometry rather than raw encoder ticks, the routine achieved a near perfect consistency rate. The integration of advanced mapping dramatically increased our autonomous point yield.