Drive Team Configuration

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by R.C.

A fully autonomous crappy robot isn't really that amazing, a well built winning robot is hands down much more amazing.

While I, in David's position, would take your advice, I don't necessarily agree with this. A fully autonomous robot that actually played the game, though not necessarily very well, would be rather impressive, at least to me.

By playing the game, I don't mean, followed a ball until it's picked up, then turned towards the goal and shot. I mean intelligently finds the closest or easiest game piece to grab while avoiding obstacles, knows not to shoat with an opponent in the way, and finally but precisely finds the goal with the game piece. Anything less than that really isn't playing the game.

Yes, that probably wouldn't be the greatest use of human resources, to use a talented programmer to recreate the most basic human driver, but that is award winning (Innovation in Control...) and a valuable experience for the programmer in question.

That said, it would probably hurt the team to a certain extent, and I can't imagine a potential drive team would be happy to see their places taken by a less competent AI. So David, if you really are going to try this, which I believe you will, if your AI is worse than a human driver, don't expect it to be used. However, if it is actually better, then that is a significant accomplishment.