[apalrd]

That's why they gave teams a lighted target in '06 and '07. '05 had a camera too, but it proved to be too sensitive to light to work since the target was not lit and the plastic reflected differently at different angles.

As for the new laptops and the cRio, yes they change things for some teams, but we could have a laptop Dashboard last year too. If the dashboard video has little lag, it would be possible for them to allow us to look through the robot's eyes or make it advantageous to do so.

Back to the render, it is possible the reflections/colored Lexan indicate that we will have skewed/otherwise not clear vision from the driver stations, and must look through the robot's camera or rely on the robot sensors more than before for decision making. What would be really interesting is if the GDC replaced the clear plastic on the Driver Stations with black plastic (so all decision making is based only on robot sensor feedback to the drivers) or colored it so blue/red game pieces looked the same to the drivers (so the robot must tell the difference).

Kickoff is coming soon, we will know how this relates to the game then and it will seem all too obvious to us what this is.