Making autonomous accessible to all teams

[lineskier]

I would compare FIRST to the senior level DB course I just took. WPI has 7 week terms, so it is a very close match to a FIRST build season. Rather than building a database from the ground up, we built extensions on an existing framework. It sounds like many of the objectors to an ADK of sorts are arguing that it would make it too simple. I would argue that this is not that case.

The DB package worked out of the box requiring only one class to be created to utilize it, I believe and ADK could work similarly. However the cookie cutter DB package was greatly lacking, if you were to utilize it you would want to build extensions.

For one of our extensions the goals was to create a deadlock prevention algorithm utilizing a loop finding algorithm. I use this example because if you utilize a state machine in your autonomous, you may want to find loops too. Any ADK would require teams to extend it, in order to accomplish anything beyond a sequential autonomous.

this is a video of our robot from '06, to accomplish this a state machine was necessary.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...3997861101882#

I am just saying that utilizing a framework such as an ADK, would give students a soft-eng perspective, and teach them how to build extensions to existing frameworks. Also it would give them the opportunity to delve into some higher level design learning ( I <3 the factory pattern).

Such an ADK would introduce students to:
Threads
Design Patterns
Soft Eng
Algorithms
State Machines
and I'm sure much more....