On the quality and complexity of software within FRC

[AlexanderTheOK]

Originally Posted by Jared

I didn't see a team this year that seriously benefited from having computer vision on their robot.

This part is really important here. I was a rookie in 2012, a year when vision processing was actually a useful tool for aiming due to the small size of the baskets. Every offseason afte,r I developed vision code (going from thresholds to SURF, ORB, and cascade classifiers) hoping that in the 3 YEARS I HAD LEFT, there would be ONE GAME in which vision processing was useful.

So far, the closest thing to useful vision processing in those 3 more years I spent programming has been cheesy vision. While it is an ingenious solution to an unexpected but consistent field failure, it is not robot vision processing, it was a simpler, quicker to develop, and more effective alternative to it.

This year, at my last regional as a student ever, Ventura, there were two teams that were able to consistently stack the 3 yellow totes, 1717 and 696.

Both robots accomplished this task without cameras, because cameras were not needed.

As others have said, it's an engineering competition, where we are making a robot that scores points. When code efficiency scores teams points, you'll see a lot of teams start making efficient code.