[GGCO]

Very interesting.

With respect to the question of what can we do to bring some of that graduate level research to FIRST, here are my thoughts.

As much as I'd love to see a game where auton can either "make you or break you", I don't think it's practical. With the huge amount of teams (even veteran ones) who are afraid of writing code or just don't have the "know-how" it could prove to be very discouraging.

But for teams like mine that have a lot of programming experience, games where auton isn't important aren't very satisfying.

What do we do?

How about create an award -- one that will get you to Nationals (or a lot of pts if you're in Michigan) -- where you have to demonstrate that your auton works and gets the job done. This would be seen on the field. You'd also have to present your code for a code review and explain any development practices (agile, etc)/tools (git/svn, etc) you used.

I think that would encourage teams to not only write clever code, but also write it in a professional manner.