[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by AJunx

Regarding autonomous mode at the end of the match:

I think everyone needs to keep in mind that FIRST is about inspiring young people to become involved with science and engineering. Surely some teams, those with great resources and highly skilled programmers, would be able to create robots designed to succesfully maneuver in an autonomous mode held at the end of the match. However, you must try to imagine how hard this would be for rookie teams.
As it was this year, I saw plenty of teams at the richmond regional and nationals that for one reason or another did not take part in the autonomous portion of the match. (I could be wrong, but I think 2 of the teams in the national finals did not move during the autonomous period) Undoubtedly, some of these teams were unable to succesfully program their robots to work during autonomous mode. I would have to guess that the percentage of rookie teams nationwide that were unable to make good use of the autonomous period was also fairly high compared with established teams.
Now imagine that the autonomous period is moved to the end of the match. Teams that were unable to make a succesful autonomous mode for their robot at the beginning of the match would now be utterly (to put it bluntly) screwed. Also, how boring would matches be if during the last 30 seconds, only one or two of the robots was still doing something productive? (It would be like when a couple of robots get tipped over midway through the match and can't recover.)
We put up with some robots not doing something at the beginning of the match because autonomous mode provides an extra facet to the engineering challenge of the competition. At the same time, this extra facet is not so extreme as to discourage rookie teams from competing. In my humble opinion, to place the autonomous mode at the end of the match would create an obstacle so great that many prospective teams would choose not to take part in the competition. Moving the autonomous period to the end of the match would therefore go against FIRST's goal of expanding interest in science and engineering to more young people across the country. For this reason I am firmly against moving the autonomous period to the end of the match.

-Andrew

I completely understand where you're coming from, but i disagree. I feel this could be even easier than in the beginning. Imagine if it was at the end of this years competition. Instead of starting all the way back in front of the players station, a robot could just climb towards the end of the match, and the autonomous would just be to extend a hook and hang. By being able to maneuver ur robot to a better position to do an autonomous would be easier for most if not all teams. Granted auto at the end wouldnt work with this years game, but at the end would be easier.