[KenWittlief]

this year, sit up in the stands, in the top row, and zoom a Hi8 camera so it covers the whole field.

Record several matches, then watch them carefully and see what you can observe on the video.

Hi8 has a resolution of about 500 x 480 pixels. The playfield is what? 60 feet long? thats 720 inches. So your whole-field video has a resolution of about 1.5" - so you will be able to discern objects about 3" and larger.

That means you cant see hands, or robot arms, or the lines on the floor clearly.

You would need a high defintion camera recording system, like 1024p HD TV, and you would need 2 or 3 to cover all sides of the field + the human players. It gets expensive really fast.

Professional sports: they use camera operators to follow the play action, and they zoom in on whoever has the ball, and the major players in several zones on the field.

Who has the ball in a FIRST match? how many cameras would it take to track 4 or 6 robots on the field, plus all the human players, plus the drive teams and coaches to make sure they dont break any rules?