Unfortunately I think your answer is yes. I made a poll a few weeks ago and Dave voted
"only" for the CMU cam. Now he is a slippery one and could have seen the fact that his selection would have been scrutinized - hence did it to throw us off. But I don't think so. Also this product had a lot of thought/investment put into it from FIRST for 2005, so I doubt they'd abandon it already.
I don't think it's a good tool out in the open on randomly lit fields. But it might work if the new game controlled the background you searched for items on and maybe on a smaller scale.
Example: If for instance we end up searching for colored PVC pipe laying on a black cloth, your mechanism could elevate the camera above the items looking down on the black background and eliminate the environmental noise that screwed those cams up.