How Programs Make Decisions

A robot is constantly making decisions.

At every moment, the code needs to answer:

What should the robot do right now?

A simple way to think about robot programming is:

Input → Decision → Action

For example:

Gamepad input
↓
Should the intake run?
↓
Turn the intake motor on

As robots become more complex, the number of decisions grows. A competition robot may need to handle:

• Driver controls
• Sensors
• Autonomous routines
• Motor control
• Safety conditions
• Multiple actions happening at once

Early programs often use simple sequences:

Drive forward
Turn
Shoot
Park

However, real robots cannot always follow a fixed list of instructions. They need to react to changing conditions.

This is where control flow becomes important.

Control flow describes how a program decides:

• What code should run
• When it should run
• How the robot should transition between actions

In FTC programming, the most important control flow concepts are:

• Sequential programming
• State machines
• Command-based programming
• Event-driven programming

These ideas allow you to move from writing simple scripts to designing reliable competition code.