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Originally Posted by Jeff McCune
In the past, many teams programmed nothing and simply used the default code. The addition of autonomous mode was a huge step in the right direction, but I still think the community is doing a lot of hand-holding in this area. Case in point would be the navigation code that's been written that allows teams to navigate to the IR beacon with no programming. That's pretty disheartening.
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The code to navigate to the IR beacon is sub-optimal. As they said at the Kickoff, there is a lot of room for improvement. The reason the code is included is to give people who have never thought about how to control a robot autonomously a place to start.
Also, if you want a mechanical analogue to the software "hand-holding", look no further than the working drive train included in this year's kit. It will help rookies and teams short on resources to compete without making them powerhouses or overly limiting those teams that attempt something more complex.
The relaxed additional electronics rules and the new brain have gone a long way to making electronics and software equal partners to mechanics in the building-a-FIRST-robot equation.