More time... I'd love it!
But I think it would add a few more requirements for the hardware on the FIRST robots. More time means more time to gather more data from sensors... more data volume from sensors usually means more processing and more processing complication to corellate multi-sensor input and make an intelligent response to that data. Maybe one of the new
Microchip PIC 32-bit processors?
I know that we had a fantastic autonomous mode that used scanning ultrasonics, but it took 0~2 seconds too long to complete... partly because we had 2 seconds worth of scan+process time to solve out a (horrendously complicated) trigonometric solution, and noise filter/bandpass all the data.
Along with more autonomous time... and I know I'm just dreaming here... it would be awesome if NI could offer one of its field point vision boxes at a discount to FIRST teams. I might point out that
NI vision in various forms is used extensively in the fully autonomous, bipedal
RoboCup competition.
-q