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For robotics I decided to write a program that would automatically tune a PID loop (a loop with three magic constants that tells you how much power to give the motors).

Being a high school student who hasn't been taught anything about the theory of PID loops or the right way to tune them, I had no clue what I was doing. So instead of actually learning the calculus to do it, I just made an evolutionary tuner that keeps guessing slight variations of the last-best three constants.

Basically, you press start and the robot spins in circles until you come back in 15 minutes.

Comments
  • 1
    Well, calculus isn't really that easy to learn, so I guess you are ahead of the game with your hack.
  • 0
    It's not as hard as you would think :-)
    I didn't like it either, but it's a must if you want to synchronise two cheap motors made in China.
  • 0
    Evolutionary algorithms have worked for the past 3.8 billion years, so why not!
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