Thoughts about future autonomous scoring...

[theycallhimtom]

My only problem with an award for autonomous mode, and some of the awards in general is that teams work specifically for the awards. From my two years I found the coolest thing about the competition is working as a team. This year we had a good programming group so our fabrication team could make some different choices. Were already thinking about what to do for next year when our fabrication will be strong and our software will be weak. Rather than the software people competing for the software award, and the builders competing for engineering awards I think that everyone working as a team to play the game is much more rewarding.

That being said an autonomous mode award would be great. Having spent many, many hours working on our autonomous mode (and that &%&#$*% camera) I know what teams put into their auto modes, and that they deserve recognition. One more award will not turn all FIRST teams into groups of award mongering students. But at some point having an award for every little part of the robot gets to be ridiculous. Certainly having more than one autonomous award would be taking it to far.