Hello there

I am part of a robotics team. every year we get avrious challenges and travel to a competition. the challenge in the competition changes each year. last year we had to pick up milk crates and put them into various places. when the round starts, there were 15 seconds on which the robot drives autonomosly, and 2 minutes after that was teleoperated. what i am most concerned about is the autonomous period. our robot simply used a time delay in the code to be able to drive to one pre programmed spot - thats it! this year I would like to improve, and get rid of the time delay. what are some good sensors I could use on the robot and what should I control them with? thanks, any ideas appreciated. here is a description of last year's challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZbdwYiCY74

although the challenge is going to be different this year, I would like to plan ahead as to what sensors I can use and how to use them.

some ideas I already have:

laser range finder - will prevent us from bumping and will allow us to drive up to things not dependent on time

rasberry pi with a camera for image recognition? I dont know how hard this will be and if its even possible confused

thanks