[JamesBrown]

I am kind of curious about the concern teams have with amount of time allotted for calibrating on the fields.

While it is never explicitly stated what teams will be allowed to do I don't think expecting to run autonomous as you guys discussed is realistic. Bill's post allots time for teams to "Calibrate their sensors"; calibrating sensors would not include adjusting distances for dead reckoning. Calibrating sensors seems to suggest that teams that need to adjust settings or thresholds for line following or vision would be able to adjust them a competition equivalent lighting environment. I see the need for teams using vision and FIRST implemented a similar system in at least 2006 and 2007 and it worked fine. I don't see the need for line following robots as the color differences are obvious enough that loose thresholds should account for lighting variations, I guess teams may use the sensors in a way I wouldn't expect but my assumption is that it would be the exception, not the rule.

While there are 160 teams that could potentially need to calibrate on each pair of fields I would venture a guess that less than 10% of them have sensors that actually need to be calibrated.