Do robotic parts actually work?

[-Velocity-]

Hello all,

I haven't played since before Breaking Ground released.  I was eager to try out the robotic parts, but so far I have been extremely disappointed.  Case in point: I was using a "servo motor" part to try to make a VTOL spaceplane.  I attached Rapiers to servo motors, figured out how the KAL-1000 could be used to control the angle, and thought I was golden.  WRONG.  I was running into the issue that, despite the so-called servo motors being set to a target angle of 0 degrees, the motors were not achieving the target angle due to torque on the motors.  Here's the kicker: the servo motors have PLENTY of torque to spin the engines all around their full arc of rotation.  It's just that, target angles are never met because, unlike actual servo motors, the so-called "servo motors" in game apparently have ZERO feedback loop.  Real servo motors don't miss an angle because there's a slight torque or force on the motor, they have a feedback loop that tells them their actual position and applies whatever actuation is needed to achieve the desired position/angle.  

Overall, I'm finding that due to the lack of any kind of feedback loop on the game's so-called "servo motors", they miss their commanded angles badly and constantly, making them essentially useless for vectored thrust.  

I've also had some issues with robotic parts shifting after my spacecraft was launched.  I had a large number of pistons for landing legs on a base I launched.  I wanted to be able to level out the base on whatever body I landed it on using the pistons.  Well, once I got to the desired destination, I found that all the pistons had warped and skewed into an entirely different placement on my spacecraft- some were even floating out in space, not visually attached to the craft!  I'm not using any mods other than Mechjeb.  It only happened to the robotic parts and the parts directly attached to them.  I was able to figure out that the warping of the piston placement happened during my burn out of Minimus orbit.  And yes, the warping/skewing was very, very permanent.  I was only able to fix it by manually editing my save file in notepad++ to restore the original placement of the parts.

I also was having some issues with robotic parts, if they interact with your own vessel at all, they cause huge warp errors- as soon as I hit timewarp, my vessel's delta-V will change substantially, making me miss encounters with other planets entirely.

Am I missing something?  Are these robotic parts really this badly implemented?  Literally every single time I've tried to use them, I've gotten badly burned by one problem or another.

Edited August 10, 2023 by -Velocity-

[Hotel26]

"Breaking Bad", I call it.  Usually surmountable but not without hair loss.

I have a Tylo lander stuck in a warehouse with tarpaulins draped, gathering dust.

One last problem: it works fine; but go away and come back and the pistons are just ... missing.

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by Hotel26

[king of nowhere]

9 hours ago, -Velocity- said:

Hello all,

I haven't played since before Breaking Ground released.  I was eager to try out the robotic parts, but so far I have been extremely disappointed.  Case in point: I was using a "servo motor" part to try to make a VTOL spaceplane.  I attached Rapiers to servo motors, figured out how the KAL-1000 could be used to control the angle, and thought I was golden.  WRONG.  I was running into the issue that, despite the so-called servo motors being set to a target angle of 0 degrees, the motors were not achieving the target angle due to torque on the motors.  Here's the kicker: the servo motors have PLENTY of torque to spin the engines all around their full arc of rotation.  It's just that, target angles are never met because, unlike actual servo motors, the so-called "servo motors" in game apparently have ZERO feedback loop.  Real servo motors don't miss an angle because there's a slight torque or force on the motor, they have a feedback loop that tells them their actual position and applies whatever actuation is needed to achieve the desired position/angle.  

Overall, I'm finding that due to the lack of any kind of feedback loop on the game's so-called "servo motors", they miss their commanded angles badly and constantly, making them essentially useless for vectored thrust.  

I've also had some issues with robotic parts shifting after my spacecraft was launched.  I had a large number of pistons for landing legs on a base I launched.  I wanted to be able to level out the base on whatever body I landed it on using the pistons.  Well, once I got to the desired destination, I found that all the pistons had warped and skewed into an entirely different placement on my spacecraft- some were even floating out in space, not visually attached to the craft!  I'm not using any mods other than Mechjeb.  It only happened to the robotic parts and the parts directly attached to them.  I was able to figure out that the warping of the piston placement happened during my burn out of Minimus orbit.  And yes, the warping/skewing was very, very permanent.  I was only able to fix it by manually editing my save file in notepad++ to restore the original placement of the parts.

I also was having some issues with robotic parts, if they interact with your own vessel at all, they cause huge warp errors- as soon as I hit timewarp, my vessel's delta-V will change substantially, making me miss encounters with other planets entirely.

Am I missing something?  Are these robotic parts really this badly implemented?  Literally every single time I've tried to use them, I've gotten badly burned by one problem or another.

this is the dancing porcupine rover, with the rockets mounted on hinges. here pointing downwards, for ascent

here the engines are pointed backwards, for greater propulsive power as rover

some people even managed to build actual robots.

 

so yes, robotic parts do work, but they do have limitations.

first, in the amount of force they can take. those I used in the pictures are terrier engines. the hinges can keep them in position with some shaking. i tried using the more powerful darts, and the thing broke apart. In the same vein, I made a retractable solar array by attaching trusses to hinges, and solar panels to the trusses. but the more trusses you put, the less the system is stable. At some point it just keeps oscillating.

So, your attempt at putting rapiers engines on servos failed because of strenght limits. maybe using bigger servos would help. maybe the rapiers are just too powerful. in any case, related to this, robotic parts are not perfectly still. As you see, I used them for vectored thrust, in that I can direct my thrust upwards, downwards, or backwards. but fine control? nope. The push from the engines make the joints shake too much. In fact, the rover can be stable in flight only because of engine gimbaling correcting it.

Second, robotic parts are prone to shifting and getting distorted if force is applied on them. for example, if a big ground station is laying on them, like you tried to do. In this case, they can get bent by small amounts, that gradually get bigger with time. In my case, those hinges were moving lower and lower, until at some point I had to go in eva construction, disassemble the engines and hinges, and build them again.

third, robotic parts are also prone to bugs in many other cases. for example, if you place a docking port on a robotic part, it generally crashes. or two robotic parts stuck on each other. you can mmitigate this by putting other parts between the two robotic parts; for example, a simple octogonal strut between piston and docking port.

fourth, robotic parts can get bugged even if you're not doing any of the above. the more complex your construction, the more likely it will bug.

on the plus side, my dancing porcupine rover went to circumnavigate four different celestial bodies, and the robotic parts kept on working. so you can find some safe configuration. they are rddled with bugs, but they can be made to work.