[KenWittlief]

the problem with dead recogning is that as your bot gets wear and tear during the matches, and your batteries are at different levels of charge, the speed and direciton your bot will run will change enough to make you miss the ball

the IR sensor scheme the originator of this thread created solves part of that problem - no matter how much the forward speed of your bot changes, it will know when its reached the beacon off 90° to port or starboard - its will know where it is on the field at that instant

our bot is very similar - and since we get to the ball in about 5 seconds, it would be a waste of time to just sit there for almost 10% of the match

so we back up and turn towards the drivers, turn our front roller on and drive through the field of freshly fallen balls to try and capture some of them.

dead recogning is ok if you only want to go straight for several seconds and do nothing else - but I have to disagree with one of the previous posts - if you implement your sensors correctly then your bot will get the ball more reliably, not less

and it will be able to do other things - and compensate for stuff like, oh I dont know, the opponent teams bot getting in your way and you have to push it backwards on the way to the release ball? :^)