What Should Be Done With Autonomous?

[xavior06]

notice as first progresses it is hoping students will use more autonomy, i.e. reflective strips last year, more reflective strips and complete autonomy for 15 seconds this year... maybe soon there will be no drivers.. wouldnt that be crazy!

[Koko Ed]

Originally posted by xavior06
notice as first progresses it is hoping students will use more autonomy, i.e. reflective strips last year, more reflective strips and complete autonomy for 15 seconds this year... maybe soon there will be no drivers.. wouldnt that be crazy!

That would be absolutely disastrous.
Alot of teams had very poor autonomous modes or none at all. There would be no competition.

[CAD-Demigod45]

I thought the autonomous mode made the competition more interesting. It showed how serious teams took programming. Anybody who didn't have one this year was one step behind. I dont know if it would be possible to have the entire match done autonomously, with all the trouble teams had with 15 seconds.

[Aaron Lussier]

That sounds great and all, but just as the Software people were fighting for more stuff to do, With an entirely automou game, the Drivers, and co-pilots would start riots in the streets if they did not get to drive there robot at all, I'm sure that all drivers will agree with me. Whats the purpose of building a bot if you never get to drive the thing, even for fun. However I am not the driver for my team, but I pretty much asume that entire auto matches would not be the best thing in the world, maybe an extension on the 15 sec to like 20 or maybe even 30, But I dont think its ever gonna get over that.

[xavior06]

im not saying like right away next year.. but it would be interresting to have more and more autonomy... it truely showed how well many teams planned out their strategy and its cool to see how the robots just go at it when its not the minds of the drivers thinking things out.

yea it would be disasterous if FIRST didnt think about the smaller teams that cant program the entire thing. Yet in a couple years its def. possible.

[WakeZero]

There will never be a full autonomous FIRST robotics competition... just like there will never be an underwater game... or games that don't involve a human player

FIRST would not be the same in either of these situations... besides, drivers make the game more interesting because robots can't create strategies on the fly. It is the same reason people like to play internet games rather than just play against the computer: its more challenging

[Chris Hibner]

Originally posted by WakeZero
There will never be a full autonomous FIRST robotics competition... just like there will never be an underwater game... or games that don't involve a human player

Never say never. I heard some rumors that an all autonomous game might not be too far off in the future. We'll see.

Personally, I would love to see more autonomous play. Of course, I'm a controls engineer working at an electronics place, so more autonomy would benefit my team.

-Chris

[Greg Young]

I would like to see more autonomous play, but not complete autonomous operation. Aside from the possibility of an insurrection by the drivers, the need for the driver and field strategist to adapt to the rapidly changing situation on the field is a fascinating aspect of the game. The importance of field strategy was a great feature of this year's game.

Designing a game that requires autonomous routines during the driver control time is a possibility. I haven't given this enough thought to make suggestions, but the task required would have to be simple and short enough not to interrupt the flow of the game.

Greg

[Redhead Jokes]

Our Northrop Robotics Engineer says this is the best competition he's ever seen, far better than Battlebots, and also because autonomy is REAL robotics.

[Jeff Waegelin]

My prediction: auto gets longer over the next few years, and becomes a more critical element, but human control will always be a part of FIRST. Feel free to harass me endlessly 5 years down the road, but I stand by this. There will ALWAYS be a human operated mode in FIRST.

[dlavery]

Originally posted by WakeZero
There will never be a full autonomous FIRST robotics competition... just like there will never be an underwater game... or games that don't involve a human player

I just love it when people make absolute statements! It makes the game design process all that much more interesting....

For all those that say a fully autonomous game is neither possible nor interesting, you might want to take a very close look at RoboCup, and see where they are headed.

-dave

[Joel J]

Originally posted by xavior06
notice as first progresses it is hoping students will use more autonomy, i.e. reflective strips last year, more reflective strips and complete autonomy for 15 seconds this year... maybe soon there will be no drivers.. wouldnt that be crazy!

Just. Say. No. <-- I say that as both a programmer and a driver.

[Andy Grady]

Ok...I will admit that the Autonomous mode was more successful than I thought it would be. Though I still prefer the game without it. However, if FIRST were to ever go to full autonomous rounds, I'd join Battlebots the next day and never look back!

Congrats to all,
Andy Grady

[WakeZero]

Originally posted by dlavery
I just love it when people make absolute statements! It makes the game design process all that much more interesting....
-dave

Hehe, well here is my reasoning for my absolute statements.

1) A full autonomous FIRST robotics competition will never happen:

I say this because as long as FIRST wants to make their event television friendly, they need the on-the-fly thinking that robots don't posses yet. They are going for the sports atmosphere, and you need human control to make that possible.

2) An underwater FIRST robotics competition will not happen:

Just try and make this happen with a Kit of Parts that costs $1000 or less. Water + Electronics = Not Good

I could see FIRST branching off a separate competition for this and also aerial robotics... but not anytime soon. If this does happen, FIRST will no longer just be FIRST.

3) Human players will remain a part of the FIRST robotics competition

They just like them, and human players add an important dimension of Man and Machine working together to achieve something. It it just good PR

[WakeZero]

Oh geez... right after I posted that last post I got the most wicked idea... I will probably be flamed to no end for this, as it is just too diabolical

What if FIRST gave each team an option for each match whether or not they would run full autonomous, partly autonomous or no autonomous?

The benefit of full autonomous would be a multiplier of 3 for the alliance, a multiplier of 2 for partly autonomous, and no multiplier for no autonomous

So if it was two on two still, if one robot in the alliance did full autonomous, the alliance would get 3 times their score while still having one robot able to be under human control.

<goes to find a hiding spot>