[Dan Richardson]

Furthering 1 quadrant is a 12 point potential difference, and a big part of the difficulty in this years task. Also, there aren't many people who profess to have "uber" auton modes, most teams just display it like 25, 1114, 1024, 148, 217 etc.. The proclaimers are those who are slack jawed after their performance.

Regardless it would be nice if people started looking it at from a different perspective. FIRST struggled last year during autonomous, it was very difficult while I was announcing last year to get the audience motivated in a 15 second period where almost nothing happend. FIRST gave us a very simple task, and a very hard task this year in autonomous, why not try to complete those tasks, it is after all a robotics competition.

Of course there are gonna be teams that can best you but take the challenge, do your best and get it done. The odometry or dead reckoning isn't too difficult to complete the easy tasks, there are many teams that would be willing to help you. Many teams have taken the hybrid challenge and hope to see every robot moving out crossing one or more lines in auton, it will be great to see more teams doing the same. Lets make Hybrid exciting, teams flying around the field scoring dozens of points narrowly avoiding disasterous crashes. Last year FIRST seemed very dissapointed with the lack of participants in autonomous, I mean IRI excluded most events really did not have much autonomous capping. It seems like FIRST tried very hard to make it worth something again, and to also make an easy tasks and hard task that teams can complete, much like in '06.

I've already seen great autons out of some teams that aren't what you would call perenial powerhouses, and nonexistent ones from teams you would. I don't buy the powerhouse argument, I think hybrid can be more of a field leveler ( except maybe in the cases of like 1114, because, well their just rediculous.. but thats not the point ) an average team can show up with a great autonomous this year and take home the competition against traditional powerhouses. Also most people get ignored when they complain about "fairness" in capabilities of super teams who can have 600 hours of machine time and 5 engineers, why is that any different than a team that can score a few points in autonomous. FIRST's intent was to make this a high scoring challenging game, Woody said it at kick off that people who think this game is too simple just havn't thought about it enough.

Take their challenge, a negative attitude towards it won't get anyone anywhere, but a positive outlook on hybrid may produce some spectacular performances, and I applaud the teams who try.