[Pat Fairbank]

I would say that there would be a lot of benefit in having two radically different autonomous goals each year: a "super hard" goal worth a lot of points, and a "super easy" one worth fewer points but much more easily attainable.

The hard goal would require actuation of an arm or other appendage as well as the drive-train and would necessarily rely on sensors like the camera and not soley on dead reckoning, just like capping with the vision tetras this year.

The easy goal would simply be to have the robot move itself to a predefined location, for example onto a coloured 4' by 3.5' rectangle. If the robot were completely within the area (i.e. not touching the carpet outside) at the end of autonomous mode, the alliance would get bonus points added to their final score.

Although this task would be laughably simple in comparison to past games, I think it would encourage most of the less programatically-advanced teams to attempt an autonomous mode. As a result the autonomous period would be much more interesting to the majority of spectators who aren't programmers, who I'm sure think it's a lot more fun to see six uncontrolled robots charging forward in unison than five robots sitting idly while one attempts to manipulate a game object.