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In previous years, my team has always struggled to simply put a robot out on the match floor
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If this is the case, I would strongly recommend not pursuing vision processing. Advanced techniques like this are things that already strong teams pursue to get even better; say a jump from the 80th percentile to the 90th percentile. If your team has barely fielded a robot in the past, and you're looking to make your team more competitive, I would recommend some of the following:
- Get some licenses of Solidworks or Inventor (both of which are free to FRC teams) and start learning how to CAD. Look at CAD of other teams' robots, there's tons of examples in CD-Media and http://frcdesigns.com/
- Explore writing basic PID loops and learn how to use them to control your robots more accurately, both in teleop and autonomous
- Go through all the products on AndyMark and VEXPro's websites. Start thinking about how to use more off-the-shelf products on your robtos; they're a great way to maintain your robot quality while getting it done faster.
- Spend the next month trying to find a practice area. Without a doubt, the one thing you can do to make your team perform better on the field is getting as much drive practice in as possible. If you can't build a duplicate robot to practice during the season, make your drivetrain first and throw some weight on it and have your drivers start messing around with it. Aim to finish your robot earlier (Week 5) and spend the last week and a half of build practicing and tuning a basic autonomous mode.