[EricH]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

P.S. I should also add that when you ask "will we be able to control the robot from a laptop", or pretty much any technical question, there are always two answers... the technical answer and the "FRC legal" answer. The FRC legal answer is that, NO, you definitely will not be able to control the robot directly from a laptop. This is to make sure that all inputs are channelled through the driver station, and are thus subject to FRC's safety overrides and field control system. The technical answer is that when you are sitting at home in the off-season you may very well come up with a way to run the robot directly from a laptop... so it is possible to get an answer that is both yes "you can do it at home" and no "you can't do it at a competition".

Jason, are you on the 2009 GDC?

The reason I ask this is that the 2009 FRC Game Manual is the only thing that gives the FRC legal answer. (Unless, of course, you count the Q&A and the Updates that are released twice a week or so--but those are simply interpretations and amendments, respectively.) We don't have that yet, and as that is the case, only the game designers (GDC) know for sure (if even they know yet...). It's quite possible that they will allow the robots to be run off a laptop.

However, according to the current documentation, we won't be allowed to. This may change in January, but likely won't.