I'm not sure what to think:
- I guess it would be nice to have an FPGA available for custom high-speed processing. Right now it's theoretically possible with an external FPGA, but the cost constraints make it quite difficult. Maybe you could run some of the machine vision on the FPGA as well.* (I'm assuming that there's lots of headroom available on the FPGA, but I don't know how many gates and I/O resources are necessary to implement common image processing tasks, and how many are absorbed by the existing firmware.)
- It's easy to let this get out of hand. The < 20 teams that have the resources to program in VHDL are going to obliterate the competition with fancy autonomous modes, while the > 500 teams that have never had a proper autonomous mode will be that much further away from the rapidly evolving state of the art. (It could be roughly likened to giving teams large brushless DC motors, without providing a robust motor controller—but letting teams build or implement their own controller, if they can figure it out.)
Maybe the right balance could be that FIRST expands the capabilities of the default FPGA firmware in a modular fashion, while simultaneously permitting teams to combine both mandatory and custom VHDL modules (to be compiled by the team at their own risk).
*Or is vision already on the FPGA, and only being invoked by the program?