The complaining about a lack of room for innovation doesn't make any sense. A FRC robot from past years probably tops out at 25mph. An electric RC car tops out at 55+mph. Let's call the electric RC car an ideal for a battery-powered teleoperated vehicle. So teams that choose to re-use an old drivetrain will be left with something that can't even do 50% of the ideal.
A 6WD system inherited from past years will be somewhat competitive, but a team that innovates to cut weight and increase handling and speed will probably be able to double the speed of a team just re-using a past drive base.
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First, they take autonomous mode away and make it "Hybrid" mode, adding essentially limited driver controls to what used to be the programmer's time to shine. Aside from the remote controller, there is no practical use for sensors on the robot, besides standard pot's and such for any manipulators. Any effective autonomous task (ie. race around Track, knock down Trackball) could be easily accomplished with dead reckoning and finding out what position the ball is at via the 4 button remote (I like to call the RoboCoach the "mini-driver"). Although the autonomous mode might be more exciting, it definitely isn't challenging.
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I don't have access to the IR board, but my impression was that it was one-directional, so you would only really be able to talk to your robot when it was pointing at you. In order to complete a full lap, the robot would not be pointing at you for a good half of it.