[JohnGilb]

Your (1) isn't quite entirely true.

The robot transitions between a number of states during a competition match:

Autonomous Disabled (waiting on the field for match to start)
Autonomous Enabled (Autonomous)
Teleop Disabled (brief period between auto and teleop enabled)
Teleop Enabled (main match time)
Teleop Disabled (end of match)

During Autonomous Enabled, the robot will not get any information from the driver station. However, in Autonomous Disabled and Teleop Disabled, the robot can in fact read data from the driver station - it just can't move any mechanisms in response.

So, using this, you can have the robot read values from the driver station during disabled, and save those values to be used during Autonomous Enabled.