I'm not sure if this one can be implemented cheaply enough to work in FRC, but after reading
this thread, I was highly intrigued by some of the concepts in the video mentioned within.
Suppose that as part of the competition, teams could also (optionally) field a smaller, all-autonomous robot in addition to their regular robot. I imagine the robots being slightly bigger than an FVC robot in dimensions, and could possibly dip into the FRC kit motors if you were feeling frisky. (If you went this route, teams would still only have, say, two Fisher-Price motors for all of their combined robots.)
For example, imagine that a large supply of balls (or perhaps more valuable balls) was on the field in front of the player stations on each side of the field. A barrier to keep the FRC robots at bay would run across the full field, just at where the field gates are. Human players could introduce their team's autonomous robot into the blocked-off section to move the balls into their choice of position on the field. To keep with the safety mindset, robots would be required to have a two-second delay after being given instructions to start, to give human players time to push the button and get clear.
Hey, it could work, right?