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Kinda Far Fetched...
The pure mechanics of a competition involving driving other teams robots would probably make for a competition of the sort to be quite improbable. A competition like this would have to have your alliance partner driving your robot all the time, and I believe this would make for more danger and problems (i.e. Arguements between teams) if something catastrophic were to occur. After all the bickering between teams in 2001, I would figure that FIRST would try to avoid this at all costs.
Prearranged alliances, though still slighty difficult to pull off, would not be as far fetched. This actually would simulate real world experiences more than ever, with communication between two parties working together to perfect designs to compliment each other. The biggest problem with this would be distances. Teams who are closer together would have a decided advantage over teams who are further away. For instance, say in the New England region, teams who are attending the Granite State Regional are paired together at kickoff. A team comprising of, say, Hyper, out of Quincy Mass (in Boston), and Gompei out of Worcester Mass, would only be 45 minutes away from each other, thus allowing for these teams to interact not only by electronic or phone communication, but also by physical visits. Now say CHAOS out of Manchester, New Hampshire gets pre-arranged with the German team who will also be competing at the Granite State Regional. They are given a decided disadvantage due to not only distance, but the possibility of language barriers.
So the question now arrises, what could the format change mentioned in the kickoff preview be? For the sake of even further arguement, lets take a look at some more format possibilities...
3 v 3 Competition Play: 3 on 3 has been done before in the competition preview games such as the Chief Delphi Invitational. Not sure how they worked out, but im sure the extra team added to the field brought a whole new element to the game.
Split Field Competition: Lego League type play. One alliance shares one field, one alliance shares another, and they compete in a completely non-physical matchup to score the most points. Only interaction between alliances would be by scoring on the other alliances field in some way. In my opinion, this would be another dangerous move on FIRST's part, as it just flat out is not nearly as exciting as physical competition.
Autonomous or Partially Autonomous Play: Another competition which I feel isn't as far fetched as it may seem at first. Though programming would be difficult on rookies, with FIRST toying around with autonomous competition with lego league, along with the introduction of more powerful sensors each year, as well as the success of some teams using the light sensors last year, there is a very distinct possibility that we could see something along this line this year. Being an electromechanical major, I would like this competition, but with strategy and excitement, i think it would take away from the game.
Of course chances are, the new format will be something totally crazy and unexpected. Either way it should be a very interesting year.
Happy Holidays,
Andy Grady
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