[gblake]

To all of the posters who have said that ... their team won't like ..., I have a suggestion. Get permission to use one of your team's current robots to do some software work, and start learning.

You aren't asking the team to stake their next several seasons on the success or failure of creating a fully autonomous robot. You are instead scheduling some time with the robot to get some useful work done. Work that will be educational, and will contribute to both the team's and the community's body of knowledge. My guess is that the robot can be up on blocks for most of the time.

Once you are initially successful developing a few small and useful improvements (small steps first, big steps once enough small steps can be combined), put a smile on your face let your team know that whether or not you (and team mates) can make the next-season robot work better during the autonomous periods, or assist your drivers during tele-op, is no longer an open question. The code for doing it is already done and is on-the-shelf for next season. That should be a good day.

My point is not that you need to "go rogue"; but that you simply need to confer with the team mentors/leaders and let them know you will want to schedule some off-season time for using the robot (safely) to do some ordinary, simple, code integration and testing. If it is possible for a team to say that is a bad idea, then I'll be dumbfounded.

Sound good?

Blake