Bill's Blog, 5/11/11 "Wait, Did he say pool"

[Jared Russell]

Two ideas I like:

1. An autonomous mode of variable length. For example: if your robot achieves one task in the first 15 seconds, autonomous mode gets extended by 15 more seconds. Or, take a page out of 2001's playbook, and let teams hit an "E-Stop" to manually transition from auto to teleop, giving them incremental bonuses the longer they stay in auto mode (would only be realistic with rules/a field that prevents hostile contact during auto mode). It is important that we don't unilaterally install a 30+ second autonomous period, simply because nobody wants to look at stationary robots for that long.

2. Slightly smaller fields (say, 20x40) and 2 vs. 2. Design so that each regional/division can host two fields that alternate play. Less down time, more matches for each team, easier to see what is going on/scout (3 vs. 3 can get hectic), and more flexibility in fitting the fields into a venue.