Hmmm...
They gave us fair warning, I think we should have a really challenging IR element that is not a crucial component of the game but rather a large bonus. This way rookies don't get flustered and those who need the challenge have considerable incentive to do so. It should be a situation where successful completion of the IR objective is very hard, though not impossible, to beat by non-IR-objective bots.
Autonomus this year was essentially useless, and many teams who could do it didn't because it wasn't strategically sound.
I like the "capture the little bot thingy" idea a lot. It wouldn't be to hard to make a simple and super-durable robot with a simple IR blaster atop it.
So here is my proposal:
During the last 20-30 seconds of the match (after the obligatory countdown) the drivers lose control and the robots go into auto mode. There should be two ways to score:
1) Something involving a scoring area. You'd have to make it such that teams could not dominate this option by "camping" it during the driver period. Perhaps there would be several scoring areas and exactly which one is THE scoring area is transmitted to the robots.
2) Two options here:
Flipping the mini-bot
Moving the minibot into a certain area (Your side of the feild, a basket, etc.)
The real issue I see with something like this would be time. Sadly people (non FIRST and otherwise) don't get riled up about auto mode that much. You have to make a tradeoff between interesting auto (which takes time), and appeal to the masses.
But hey, moving auto to the end of the round might make it really exciting, a sort of cliff-hanger beyond human control. Yeah, that would be great.
I can't wait till 2005!
