[Donut]

Ah, another fun game hint (or what appears to be one) only a few weeks before kickoff, just to torment us all further. Who else loves the Christmas season?

Now, my weigh ins on some previously mentioned ideas as well as my own...

1. Although cool, I don't see this as an inter-robot communication device. Each alliance would be limited to only 4 signals they could send between the robots, and for them to mean anything, there would have to be a universally adopted code between all teams in FIRST. Every team would have to know that receiving a COM0 signal means "head to left side of field", "score gampiece", "inflate clown balloon", etc. To be honest that seems like a rather boring use of signals, as only four commands for the whole alliance doesn't give many options in terms of what to do.

2. Is this the end of the CMUCam? With the success and usefulness it's gained in more recent auto-modes, I don't see the camera ever leaving competition permanently, but I do think FIRST could take a break from it. The camera has already been mastered by a few teams, and alot have it working, even if the rest of their auto isn't up with it. I see a departure from cameras for a few years in favor of IR challenges, such as back in 2004, so everyone has a challenge again. Then once we've all figured this one out we may go back to the cameras, combine them both, or go on to something else new.

3. If FIRST does actually intend on using remote controls with these (not just as a test method), they will have to supply their own special controllers at competitions. Otherwise the risk is too high that two teams will bring the same remotes and use the same buttons, which would guarantee interference. Human players directing robots with remote controls would be interesting, perhaps a section of the field will be obscured from driver view or will have driver control removed so that only the remote may operate the robot? I hope such a system wouldn't be implemented in autonomous mode, as this would defeat the point of it (something about no human control...).

4. I keep having a leering suspicion of something akin to a game suggestion I made last year, involving goals with lights above that didn't turn on to indicate which alliance they scored for until autonomous began. Imagine four goals on the field each with an IR emitter that doesn't activate until autonomous begins. Two goals send out a signal indicating red goal, while the other two send out signals to signify a blue goal. Which goals score for which alliance are random each match, making a dead reckoning autonomous potential suicide in which you score 20 points for your opponents. Visual alliance indicators are then revealed after autonomous so teams that don't attempt to find the signal may still score in operator mode.

Unlike 2004 when teams had to figure out which emitter they were looking at themselves, FIRST is already giving us the tools to distinguish between multiple IR transmissions on field. Sounds like they must want us to use it for something, all will be explained on January 5th, but I really don't want to wait quite so long.