Preparing CS students for the Robotics Revolution

[Bryan Herbst]

I believe that the programming aspect can be plenty difficult as it is right now. My team has always struggled to get autonomous working properly, and interesting drive/control schemes such as mecanum drive make life more interesting for us programmers.

Part of the challenge is for the programmers to find something to do. This year, they could track the goals and pop up a green light on the dashboard when the driver was in an optimal shooting position/range. Once we teach our programmers to look for improvements such as these, they will find more work for themselves.

Unfortunately, the biggest block I see to our programmers these days are the limited autonomous periods. This year was horrendous- 15 seconds with absolutely no bonus reward for having a good autonomous? My team still went for it, but didn't expend too much effort on improving our autonomous code because it just wasn't worth it. FIRST needs to provide coders with a better stage for showcasing their talents. Longer autonomous (maybe 30 seconds) with a bonus.