[Tom Saxton]

Although line following is simple in theory, getting it to work and have the robot run at a speed that will get you to the tee in the 15 seconds is pretty challenging. We ignored the advice of experienced teams and tried doing it with custom analog sensors using a proven algorithm, and we had to eventually abandon it.

Using digital sensors, your robot will jerk back and forth as it goes down the line, greatly slowing it down. This can be solved with analog sensors and applying speed corrections proportional to the difference in sensor readings. This can work much better, yielding very smooth, fast driving. But getting that to work requires careful tuning.

However, your lines sensors need to be far enough in front of your drive wheels that the sensors tell you how much you need to turn, not how much you needed to turn 10 cycles ago.

My advice is to do dead reckoning unless you have very experienced programmers, analog line sensors and good separation between the sensor and the steering wheels.