This aspect of FIRST drove me nuts this year. I was one of two programmers on the team, and after we ditched the camera (with 3 days to ship), we immediately started work on autonomous mode coding. We finished at 10 PM the night before ship, but as anyone who was at VCU this year can probably remember, (I'm not trying to brag at this point) , we had the killer autonomous mode that capped the side goal every time in the qualifying and finals round except once. I also think we that we had one of the very few useful autonomous modes (at least at the beginning of the qualifying matches) That said, we were using dead reckoning, but it goes to show how much a (not even that well-coded) autonomous mode can go. I believe that upon watching a few of our rounds, several teams promptly copied our technique and adapted it for their robot, as a couple teams I was watching that originally had no useful autonomous mode suddenly were attempting to cap the side goals.
Just imagine if this year at kickoff, Dave's robot not only followed him and his shirt, but also capped the center goal on the demo field, not just in the animation. This would have been greatly inspirational to all teams (as all had to watch the kickoff), and might have resulted in the center goal being capped at least once this year. However, I can see why they didn't have the robot do anything except follow Dave: it would have been copied by teams so they could skimp on days and nights of intensive design. That being said, I did notice more than one team at both VCU and Atlanta that copied a design from the animation anyways.(forklift with a single bar in the center).
But please, I would really like to see at least something other than playing dead or the double-254gogogo from 80% of the teams. It's more interesting than watching both sides of the field park in place or ram each other head on.
And remember: a good autonomous mode is a good bargaining chip when trying to get picked for finals!
Of course, if you have a good autonomous mode, it's quite likely that you've made it into the top 8 and are doing the picking.
