IRI Rule Changes

[jagen31]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Make autonomous actually autonomous.

I mean, the Kinect and webcam driving made for cool interaction during "auton", but they were both just different ways to drive the robot in auton.

Even the hybrid auton of 2008 didn't allow for that much driving in auton.

Don't get me wrong, I love how teams took the Q&A ruling and used it to their advantage, but I feel this will probably be changed in future years (unless it will no longer be a true autonomous period).

I agree. I spent the majority of build season writing and testing vision code in opencv (first time using it, great library.) We got to the competition and had an issue with exposure and an issue with communication. So, I spent the entire rest of the competition writing a calibration routine to reduce the effects of lighting, adjusted the camera's exposure, and wrote a hysteresis threshold to add precision to the image analyzer. (I actually ported the whole thing to JavaCV because I'm more adept at java and so is the rest of my team)

Well, all that work (done with the help of a mentor who works in image analysis) was scrapped for 254's driver side CheesyVision. Because of a communication error.

I mean, its fine that its within the rules but just frustrating when you spent time trying to make a truly autonomous robot using technology that applies to an increasingly popular real world field, and such a simple yet entirely legal solution comes along.