[Al Skierkiewicz]

Warren,
You might remember that there was a lot of talk going around during Lego League season (last fall) that autonomous mode as used in Lego League would be a natural for inclusion in FIRST competition. With all of that conjecture it became a matter of discussion among many team members that we should start to think what it would take to run auto. A decision was also made that if we were going to do it, we were going to have to make it work very well. When the game was announced, we were already committed to having an auto sub team and many of those members had worked with Lego League and had that experience to draw from. With so many working on it, there were a lot of ideas that were tried and cast aside in the first weeks. (electronic compass, magnetic heading, stress gages for direction and attitude sensing and gyro for rotation) The StangPS team could only get at the robot to test after practice and build, and usually for only short periods of time. But they were a committed bunch and they made it work.