In the context of the first robotics competition, teaching the command hierarchy is a good opportunity to teach students what a state machine is... And that can

In the context of the first robotics competition, teaching the command hierarchy is a good opportunity to teach students what a state machine is... And that can be a good opportunity to talk about what a computer does, because the computer is basically a hardware implementation of a state machine. But that isn't the kind of lesson that you want to be cramming into the middle of the competition season.