Making autonomous accessible to all teams

[kamocat]

Originally Posted by JABot67

Perhaps the real reason why close to a majority of robots do not move in autonomous is that the teams did not have enough time to program or test their autonomous modes. Or, maybe they couldn't find the room or manpower to make a practice field. I could imagine many teams at the end of week 6 were just thinking about getting their robot together, or making weight, or getting their kicker to work, or adding a ball possession mechanism, or doing anything that the team considers more important than getting an autonomous working. I think that any team that has at least one dedicated programmer from week one can figure out how to do an autonomous, but whether or not there is time to debug and test it at the end of the season is a different story.

You're probably right. Is there anything that can be done to remedy this?
I think the programming time tends to affect rookie teams the most, and isn't usually a big deal once programmers are familiar with the language. Our region holds pre-season workshops for such purposes, though many rookie teams are pulled together at the last minute. Releasing the WPI libraries before kickoff could be a big help as well.
But lack of time to test is something every team runs into. What about encouraging modular control systems that can be removed from the robot intact and used on a test setup while the robot undergoes mechanical changes? Educating on practices of testing algorithms on the PC? Modular code implementation? I have a software development guide which might help with this.