[stingray27]

Originally I thought that the Space Bar E-stop function was a huge pain. But after a year of it, I finally think it is a really good idea for the following reasons:

First, as others mentioned it is the biggest key on the keyboard and therefore VERY hard to miss - if in an emergency, you just smash your hand toward the keyboard and you are bound to hit it.

Second, when programming on the driver station (in which we use the same laptop for programming and the driver station due to how the driver station ALWAYS comes with the robot and therefore we always have the code with us), it is much better having the e-stop button as the space bar instead of another button such as the enter key. We usually try to change a value such as a control in Labview with the code running and sometimes forget to hit the disable key or believe it is fine to just let it keep running. With the enter key being the disable key, when we enter to change the control's value, it disables the robot and therefore slows us down and makes us make sure everything is safe before we proceed. The spacebar is almost NEVER used while programming because we rarely use string controls in our code.

Lastly, if anyone ever had to guess what would shut down a robot if they had no idea what/how to shut it down, the space bar seems like the easiest/first guess someone would take.

Personally I think it would be a very bad idea to disable or cover up your eStop button. It may seem like a good idea at the time to make sure your robot doesnt shut down when you dont want it too, but keep in mind you will be sorry for that ONE time something goes wrong and you can't eStop it. It is really easy to change the behavior of the user, it isn't that easy to predict the behavior of the robot.