[Abhishek R]

We used auto shifting this year, and it did help us get up to speed faster. I can't comment on the specific technical aspect as to why, but in both 2013 and 2014 our robot always starts in 1st then shifts up to 2nd on the fly then back down to 1st when we come to a stop. It puts less strain on the battery - we could leave it in second all the time while we had a fresh battery, but found it could quickly get run down.