[Greg McKaskle]

The FIRST field is indeed shiny. It has aluminum diamond plate all along the wall, and lexan up above. Lexan is both transparent and reflective. All polished surfaces, like glass, lexan, aluminum, and painted surfaces will reflect to some degree, and that means that overhead lights, and lights from the robots will show up where a reflection point (where the camera and light reflect about the surface normal). Furthermore, the lexan doesn't prevent lights from shining through the back surface, so lights in the stands, windows and other light sources can shine into the camera through the driver wall of lexan. And there are also the t-shirts, hats, and other gear worn by the drivers that are showing through the lexan. It all leads to an image that is quite difficult for simple processing to deal with.

This is why I wouldn't recommend looking just for color. If you combine color and shape info you will be far more robust. This will almost always reject glare, even from the diamond plate. If the shape info is robust enough, you don't even need to use color, just brightness.

The camera will most definitely pick up the hoop, net, and supports. Camera placement is indeed important in part due to the hoop and net blocking the reflective tape. As shown on the targets in the paper, the lower edge will be the first to be impacted.

As for blinding drivers, I don't think the LEDs need to be very bright. Certainly they aren't as bright as the BFL.

Greg McKaskle