Dead Reckoning

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Dead reckoning refers to a system operating without awareness of its absolute position. Instead, path integration is used based on a previous known location. In FIRST, robots may use dead reckoning if they do not have sensors to measure absolute position (for example, rangefinders). Dead reckoning can be used in autonomous mode to track approximate robot field position for autonomous operations. Accuracy depends on the rate of the integration loop as well as the accuracy of the sensors, and error accumulates over time.

One method of dead reckoning uses a gyroscope and encoders to track 2D field position. On each step, the robot can integrate its current position from its starting position by advancing the position by the change in the encoder value in the direction measured by the gyroscope value.