Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Soukup
Back to the topic. I agree with Don, once a vast majority of the teams show a capability to complete - or at a bare minimum, attempt - the autonomous challenge then FIRST should consider upping it. Until then, I'll happily take extra nights off after the robot ships instead of staying late to fiddle with autonomous.
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In my opinion, this argument against more challenging autonomous modes is not quite valid. It doesn't take into account the fact that increasing the complexity/importance of autonomous mode w.r.t. the game as a whole would cause teams to actually create better autonomous programs because the importance of autonomous mode would be increased in the decision calculus of how much time to spend on different tasks. Our team (and, I suspect, many others) does not prioritize autonomous programming because (a) it is the last thing that can be done, often requiring a fully put-together robot to be tuned effectively, and (b) it is simply less valuable than the mechanical pieces in terms of scoring well in the game. If FIRST gave teams more incentive to produce good code, teams would put more effort into it, and more students would learn more about control systems.
For example, in this last year's game, autonomous mode was worth a fairly significant number of points, but it relied on a team having a fully tested and operational autonomous in order to receive any reward. Why not allow "partial credit" - some points for doing the first (easy) step of autonomous, and then increasing points earned as teams accomplished more autonomously. (In 2011, this could have been, say, 3 points for following the line to the alliance wall in addition to the Ubertube bonus.) This would make it profitable for even rookie teams to create simple autonomous programs, giving them experience that they could build on in future years.