FRC...autonomous or driver-controlled competition?

[Greg Marra]

I would have liked to see more options for autonomous methods this year.

I know in the past FIRST has had lines on the field that properly equiped robots could follow; this would provide an alternative to encoder wheels. The camera provides another alternative.

It just seems that your options this year are pretty limited to capping the tetra you start with, knocking a hanging tetra, or capping the vision tetra. All that any of those do is score points you could have gotten in the regular round anyway (although the vision bonus tetras are nice).

It just seems to me that this autonomous mode seems pretty watered down compared to last year. I'd like to see completing an autonomous objective give your alliance a unique advantage that can't be gained in normal play. Something like capping a vision tetra means a second tetra is added to the auto-loading zones for the start of the game.

Autonomous mode should be about options, which unfortunantly adds complexity.