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Originally Posted by dhitchco
Auto mode MUST remain at the beginning of the round for all the reasons you have stipulated.
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Um... still not buying it. What were the reasons?
- The students would not release the controls on time: 1)The controls are useless in autonomous mode unless you alter some of the code that is not supposed to be altered, and even then I'm not sure if the controls will work. It could easily be verified if you have altered inappropriate code by having the robot set to autonomous mode and allowing a ref to try to controls to see if the robot responds in any way. 2) There could be a brief 2 second pause between driver mode and autonomous mode until all the drivers released their controls. We've had this the other way around in previous years to allow for the judges to evaluate what goals were accomplished in autonomous mode.
- Too hard to program: We have already seen examples from Vex of how the autonomous coding can be made easier.
- Not enough teams use auto mode: I think 95% of the teams at our regional last year (and it was the first round of regionals) had some form of auto mode by the end of the practice day.
- There would have to be a rule against blocking teams from getting to their known starting point: No way! I can make a deaf, blind, stupid robot drive into a corner from any point on the field, just drive one direction long enough to hit something, turn 90 degrees and drive long enough to hit something else, lather, rinse, repeat. The kit usually includes contact switches, IR-sensors, probably a gyro, and a camera. It's not hard to find your way to a known point as long as you choose a proper known point. You drive into a wall until you square up and you know you are either looking directly down or across the field of play.
Besides, you don't have to have people setting up the field in random orientations if you have the autonomous mode at the end. The randomness is already introduced by everything that has been done during regular game play.
Feel free to dismiss this idea if you want, but at some point, even if it's not this year, we will see autonomous modes that are not at the start of the match.