[mwtidd]

Design for autonomous... then for endgame.... then design for teleop.

Historically speaking, autonomous tends to incorporate teleop into it, so by designing a robot simple enough to drive itself, it should be simple enough to allow the driver to excel.

Then the endgame is the most valuable part of the competition.

I think the traditional flow is teleop -> endgame -> autonomous and by designing that way you are almost always setting yourself up for time wasted when trying to make autonomous work, as you have designed a machine with the driver in mind, and many programmers will argue that this is the most difficult machine to program.

again just my opinion on the design flow, but I think by approaching the problem from a different direction can have a significant impact.

Also designing a robot for autonomous forces you to think about many of the things you may have assumed had you started with teleop.

This year we didn't do this, and our arm was completely variable speed based on the load on the motor. Had we designed for autonomous, a variable speed arm would have be unacceptable. Lo and behold it was a pain for the drivers to handle too.