Making autonomous accessible to all teams

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by lineskier

Why isn't it appropriate now?

Didn't say that.


But, since you've asked:
Three years ago the challenge of programming the robot was so wholly different. Students had to use C, or easyC. They could not use Labview, Java, or C++.
They had to work with interrupts. They had to work with cameras that could only identify colors, not shapes. The values returned from the camera were only a bounding box, a density, and a centroid.
They could not use floating point arithmetic. They had a poor IDE, not like the labview or netbeans you use today.
They didn't get a laptop to interface to, they couldn't use USB joysticks (before the chicklet of course, which if I remember happened in '08).
Getting the robot to drive was a challenge.

We are leaps and bounds further than what teams had three years ago. Getting autonomous to work is about as much of a challenge as finding the appropriate tutorial.


That's what I mean when I say this thread would've been more appropriate 3 years ago.