Drive Team
 

Just curious. What other sub teams are your drive team members a part of? ie build, programming, PR). My theory is build team ppl may not be the " best" drivers because they don't want to hurt the robot they put so much time into building.

Re: Drive Team
 

4183's drive team currently has:

Our fabrication lead
Our team president (who works on software and Chairman's)
Our design lead (me)
Our electrical lead

I'm pretty happy smashing our robot into things. I designed it not to break and I trust our durability testing.

Re: Drive Team
 

I'd typically say that you should have drive team members from multiple sub teams, this way they can deal with/fix any problems a robot may have on the field since they'll be the only ones who can fix it at that current time. That being said there's also many other factors such as talent, commitment, time put into the team, etc. But it's really up to you to decide what matters the most to you.

Re: Drive Team
 

What I stress on my team all the time is that the drive team should be made up of the people who can do the jobs the best. If a freshman who shows up to a decent amount of build days drives better then a senior who has been there everyday, the freshman should drive. That is the same for all of the other possessions except maybe coach.

Last year Our team had
Coach- Lead Captain/ Head of Programing
Main Driver- (me) Head of Build and Design
2nd Driver for the shooter- Head of Electronics and pneumatics
Human player - a few different students from different parts of the team

For me it was whoever showed the dedication in learning and the willingness to take risks. When people tried driving I often stood out where they drove just to see what it does to the driving.
Destructive driving is not the aim at all its always driving that utilizes your time the best. I know we have drivers who do CAD, Programming, bit of electrical, Manufaturing, interestingly enough none of the drivers seemed to enjoy reading the game rules and planning as much how to drive as I would want them too...
Yeah I know they be watching too come at me drivers!

Re: Drive Team
 

We love to have a mix of departments so that most things can get fixed, but we end up with mostly fabrication people with some electronics people in there, as well. We don't pick drive team members by department, we pick them because they're the best suited to their role on drive team.

Re: Drive Team
 

It is a mindset to have. I have been the on the drive team for two years. It hasn't been a problem for us yet but I'm certainly not afraid of breaking something. What I won't do is intentionally break the robot. Your robots have certain abilities if you can't run full speed into the wall with your manipulator down. Don't do that.

It just doesn't make sense to break your robot for no reason.

I also believe that at least one person should have intimate knowledge of the robot. I think this is very important especially for this year. If you need to make an on field repair before a match/assemble your robot. You will want someone who knows exactly how the robot works to fix it. Not the person that has been told how everything works. For most teams I don't think this is an issue but is it something overlooked sometimes.

Re: Drive Team
 

We have two programmers as the driver and operator, a mentor as our drive coach, and we haven't decided on our human player yet.

Re: Drive Team
 

Since 2009, at least, 1771 has always had a programmer and a mechanical person as the drivers of the robot, but we have always done driver testing to determine who is most qualified. It just happened to have been a programmer and a mechanical student, every time.

Our drive coach is 90% is a mentor. The human player is usually whoever is best at it, but depending on the game, it could be rotated between 2 people. (For example, in Lunacy, we had a quarterback throw the balls for us...turns out he was better at throwing balls more accurately than any of us. :rolleyes: )

A really good benefit of having both a programmer and mechanical as the drive team, is if something isn't working right, you can quickly determine if it is a hardware of software issue (It's probably hardware! :p ), or if you need to do some quick code changes before the match. And usually the programmers are very familiar with the control system, making sure everything syncs with the field, wires are correct, etc.

For the coach: While we have, like I said, used a mentor 90% of the time, that role is usually tested as well, and the drivers tend to have the final say. We have found that our students get too timid as a coach, however as a mentor, we aren't afraid to yell to get our point across to the driver... :p But like I said, the drivers tend to have the final say, because only the drivers know who is most effective for them.

Re: Drive Team
 

I'm the mechanical captain. A couple days ago I terrified the driver and the programmers and various other people standing around by driving. Apparently pushing the joystick all the way forward and then spinning around isn't normal? But the field (not this year's set up, just a field) was so empty, and I wanted it to go fast!

Honestly, I know exactly how destructible or indestructible the robot is, and specifically which parts. I've seen it/them go through a lot over the years. I'm not going to try to break it, but it's pretty tough in the crucial parts.

Back to your original question, we don't separate people into build teams, so it's a bit of an odd question to answer. Right now it's electrical/mechanical, business/mechanical, programming, mechanical/video...sort of. I can't put people into just one category, and even with two I feel like I'm missing something.

Re: Drive Team
 

The last couple of year we have had our mechanical lead as the driver because he was the most exprinced driver due to the fact that he had an older sibling on the team. Our drive captian has always been a student, again last couple of years it has been our electical lead. The secondary drive and the human players have lately been a mix of who is the most qualified and suited to the task.

Re: Drive Team
 

If anything, a build member who knows the robot well understands that it's tough as heck and handle a lot. I'm leader f build for 1885 and drove at offseason events, I wasn't great at driving but I went full speed and hit other robots b/c I know it an handle it.

Re: Drive Team
 

Our Drive Team consists of all Mechanical Team members.

We got out Mechanical lead, myself, and two others.

Re: Drive Team
 

Our drive team consists of whoever can drive the robot the best in an overall scenario. This past year I (programming lead) ended up driving the manipulator because I had so much experience when I automated the processes for it. And when in eliminations our batteries slowly became less powerful (we only have 6 chargers) it was extremely helpful because i knew the manual overrides like the back of my hand, and anyone else would not have had much experience with the process needed to manually run the fire sequence.
Our driver (we call the drive train operator the driver) was the lead mechanic, because at the end of a long day, it would often be the two of us left in the shop with one mentor, and while I was rebuilding and deploying code, he would run the robot through its paces and developed a strong chemistry with me controlling the manipulator.

Overall, the best drive team is the one that works together seamlessly. Our mentor who coaches every year commented to us this year that we were one of the quietest drive teams he remembers, because other than me calling out defensive targets, we were so used to working together that we rarely had a need to talk, it was running the motions over and over. We worked together as one, and however you can make this interaction is your best drive team.

Re: Drive Team
 

Last year our drive team consisted of:

Main Driver: CAD Lead
2nd Driver: Programming Lead (me) (I kind of knew all the buttons for all our mechanisms like it was nothing, since I programmed them)
Human Player: Mechanical
Coach: Physics Teacher

I would say having someone that is familiar with the code and how the whole computer is set up is essential. This just so happens to usually be the programmer, but it does not have to.