[Racer26]

...Far as I'm concerned theres no real need for all this lawyering of this rule.

You get FIVE functions to work with. Buttons 1,2,3,4, as well as what to do if no button is pushed.

Which to me, you could have something like

No Action: Run laps around the track, dead reckoning, using sensors, however you like.
Button 1: Get trackball from position 1
Button 2: get trackball from position 2
Button 3: get trackball from position 3
and Button 4: go to other side of track, and wait for one of buttons 1,2,or 3

and thats all you really need, and as such I suspect we're going to see ALOT of veteran teams known for good autonomous modes to have a setup much like this.

I dont think we'll see that the robocoaches signalling device is going to be super reliable, and thus realtime control is more or less out of the question.

Besides which, using a series of keys to issue a realtime operation seems a bit like trying to smash a nail into wood using your face for a hammer, as far as user friendliness goes, never mind that its breaking the rules.

Hybrid mode was not INTENDED for realtime operation. Thats what teleoperated is for. Why you would even want to try to operate one of these robots in real time with just four buttons is completely beyond me.

I race cars on the track in my spare time, I know how to 'lawyer' competition rulebooks, but I don't with respect to FIRST because finding a loophole thats obviously against the spirit of the competition takes away from the fun of solving the challenge, where in the racing world, we don't have this notion of gracious professionalism, rule-lawyering happens all the time by everyone, and to be frank, the only real goal is to be the fastest.