They scraped the camera :-(

[Mark Pendergast]

Sorry to spoil the party, but I am glad the camera is gone (at least for a while.) We have never been able to get the camera to work consistently. We have a small team and have never had the time or resources to debug it. We had autonomous software that would have worked if the camera was not checking out the overhead lights or other points of interest, but we rarely got a consistent lock on anything. I believe that has been the experience of the majority of teams.

<RANT >
From what I have seen, the camera has been a failure. It is balky and unreliable. In 2006 and 2007 very few teams at the Boilermaker were able to make it work consistently. (Even with the 'best' teams at IRI in 2007, autonomous ringers were few and far between.)

Also, they have not made a big difference in the game. In 2006, most teams used dead reckoning - ignoring the camera. In 2007, very few teams even tried to score, let alone made a ringer - and the advantage for doing so was minimal.
</RANT>

I am excited about the new IR challenge. I hope that it will be reliable than the camera.