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Sam

Here's Sam, a brand new hovering following robot.

--How to use Sam
If you paste him into your world just go into his programmable block and in custom data follow the directions.
He will then follow you at a distance of about 10 and a height of 20.

His accurate follow range is 50, but I implemented a rough camera raycast that works to about 70...sometimes.

If you want to change the height enter the script and set the minHeight variable to another height, 5 works ok. I set it to 20 because of obstacles.

I've now added access to some of his pid controls in the top portion of the script, mostly for my own benefit for fine tuning, play with them at your own risk. His maxTilt is there too, which can increases his speed and decreases his stability.

--About Sam
Now I know what you're thinking. "Sure, it can follow me, but can it smack into trees at 30 km/hr?" You're darn right he can. Sometimes he gets up to 40. Sam's got pid controllers out the exhaust, so he lands soft as a feather and moves real smooth. You could even paste him 100 meters in the air and he'll drop right to the ground. Add what you want to him, he'll compensate for the most part. Add thrusters for more lift if he starts to sag.


The beauty of Sam is that he is pretty flexible. There is script in place for real time detection of added and removed parts, as well as error checking if a part is missing so you just get an error instead of a crash, but for now that isn't implemented. If you add a part recompile the script to detect it. This could be extra thrusters to carry more mass or more gyros for responsiveness.

This is just a prototype for things to come, but I thought I'd throw it out there since all the things I made years back are broken now. He's also a little buggy, and sometimes he gets confused when he wants to look at something while maneuvering. He'll be better eventually. One of my goals is to only use the hardware he has right now, so any future improvements in script could be copied and pasted into any modification of the base without rebuilding the whole thing.