[Bongle]

I've been on sensor-heavy teams (my current one, 2702) and sensor-deficient teams.

The sensorless teams did ok, though they'd be inconsistent. It's hard to make sure that arms get to the right place each time, it's hard to do a proper repeatable auto mode, and it's hard to make sure that your robot can't damage itself in case of operator error. One time a structure that required two motors moving at the same time had the operator only move one motor and bent the entire frame of the robot.

2702 goes far in the opposite direction. Assuming everything worked (and at Waterloo, things did), this year's robot can be completely operated with 3 buttons: one to go to "load mode", one to load a frisbee, and one to fire the frisbees. Last year's robot needed two digital sidecars because we had about 14 sensors to manage the basketballs.

The firing mode had to spin up the motor until it was at the right speed, hold the speed, then move a set of augers exactly one rotation to release exactly one frisbee, then move a servo to push the frisbee out. All those operations were repeated 4 times in about 3 seconds. A human simply couldn't do it.

The advantages of a fully-sensored robot are pretty obvious: properly programmed, they're faster, more reliable, don't damage themselves, and are easier to operate.

Advantages to sensorless teams:
-Far fewer points of failure
-Simpler to code: not only do they not have to program sensor code, but they also don't have to handle cases where sensors fail and overrides are needed
-Few easier to test
-If designed properly (aka "let's hope the driver never makes a mistake" is never said or implied in the design), then they can be extremely robust and reliable.
-May be more likely to come across simpler (but equally good) solutions to the problem, as "solving it in software" is never proposed.