Our team was planning on placing cubes into the exchange during autonomous. I just wondering how many other teams were planning on/considering doing this, or if this would even be a good idea.
P.S. our current plan is to drive from the center to the exchange, shoot our first cube into the exchange, back up to the auto line, then get the second from the power cube zone, and finally drive to the exchange to shoot our second cube in.We thought about it a little, but when this (FIRST FRC Q&A System) came out we lost interest. The risk/reward trade-off just did not seem worth it anymore.
Steve
Duly noted, we shall program our bot to wait patiently in the exchange zone after picking up the second cube instead.
I do not think this would be beneficial to you since during the Autonomous the person managing the exchange can not touch the exchange, thus there would be no benefit. It would be better to head for the baseline and cross it or place a cube in your switch.
There’s a lot of time left over in autonomous after (potentially) placing a cube in your switch that would be a shame to waste 
If you are a non-scale scoring robot you can make yourself very valuable with your autonomous mode. Start against the wall in the center of the field, and score a single cube into the switch on whichever side is lit for your alliance. This would require two paths, which you could work out ahead of time, that are selected by the FMS signal at the start of auto.
This auto mode, and the ability to rapidly move the pyramid of cubes into the exchange will make you a hugely valuable 2nd pick. We will be scouting for this specific combination of abilities, and consider it a vital part of an event winning alliance.
I would highly suggest that if you are programming an exchange bot auto that you not use the center as a starting position. That position is going to be one of the most wanted starting spots for teams, as it allows an easy auto to choose left or right switch and get the super important switch ownership. If you go into a match asking to do center auto and aren’t doing the switch, you are likely to run into hard push back nearly every match.
An exchange auto would be interesting to see in a match, but I feel that it may be a bit unpractical. The switch bot will probably just start in the center. As this would make programming easier, as well as stay out of the other robots ways.
If we wanted to add an exchange auto to the field, the exchange bot would have to avoid the switch bot while they are both doing their autonomi.
I think the top teams will be placing on the scale in autonomous. so a team that can consistently place on the switch in auto, will be valuable to them.
Something my team discussed, was that if we were unable to build a “cube manipulation system”, we should probably build a system so that we could drop a cube into the switch in auto. Even if the only way to get a cube into that system was to place one before the match.
I’m pretty sure that you lose all benefit to this auto due to rule A05. “POWER CUBES are off-limits. During AUTO, DRIVE TEAMS may not contact any POWER CUBES, unless for personal safety.” Your HUMAN PLAYER is part of your DRIVE TEAM (As per table 4-4), and this would mean that the most you could do is drop the power cube off in the exchange BUT you would be unable to score it (As scoring requires picking up the POWER CUBES, and that is illegal during AUTO). This ruins the benefit of coding an exchange auto because you would be unable to receive any points during auto, which puts your team at a disadvantage.
Thanks for the input here is a quick drawing of our new plan for the center
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/45726
1)score cube into switch
2)back up and pick up second cube from the power cube zone
3)put cube in exchange with remaining time
Hopefully this should score the maximum points from the center position, 29 effective points (24 points from placing the cube in 3 seconds, and 5 from the exchange cube soon to be placed in the vault).
Good plan.