[Madison]

As per the official message board,

During the Human Player Period and the Autonomous Control Period, no one is allowed on the field side of the line, except, if one team's designated driver needs to hit the e-stop button to do an emergency stop of the robot during the Autonomous Control Period. Once the Autonomous Control Period is over, the teams can step up to the team controls that are on the shelves and start manual control of the robots.

So, while the wording of the rules may be unclear as to during what phases of gameplay the participants must stand 3' from the player station, this answer is pretty clear.

This wouldn't be the first time, though, I've seen several entirely different answers to the same question.

Perhaps we can keep the wiring and interface stitched into the drivers cloths, and provide a quick connect connector interface that "plus" it all in with one quick connect.

Control systems are not my area of expertise, but would doing this require the OI to be reset to accept input from a new device? I'm not certain if the Basic Stamp is plug-n-play If a reboot is required, that's even more time lost.