Hmm you make some good points. However at this point I think we are going to stick with the loading off the ground. Timing hasn't really been our problem so grabbing the tube sooner isn't really going to get it working. When we see the second half of auton go it almost always completely finishes, the problem is with grabbing the tube in the first place. Picking a tube up off the ground in auton isn't easy and most of all requires proper placement of the keeper. However I think we have actually gotten the robot to be consistent in it's picking up of the second tube now so we should be able to get it to run correctly at MARC. So keep an eye out for some video after he MARC competition
But also more importantly, we really don't have any place to put the second gripper.
But yeah if we had been designing from the beginning specifically to run a double auton mode then a second claw would have been useful. But that brings up the fact we didn't know there would be 15 point bonuses at IRI until quite a bit after the build season to building a second claw into the frame really didn't make sense at the time of construction.
But I can see what you are getting at, taking a penalty to win a game doesn't have to be a bad thing, as long as it isn't a penalty that involves destroying another robot or something like that.