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Unread 02-11-2011, 11:17
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Jon Stratis Jon Stratis is offline
Electrical/Programming Mentor
FRC #2177 (The Robettes)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Minnesota
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Re: Question How to mentor Driver FRC Team

I think one of the biggest problems a team can have is selecting the drivers. I would highly encourage the creation of a set of guidelines so that everyone knows ahead of time how drivers are selected, and what they have to do to be considered. For example:
- Do you want to allow critical pit members (those who will be fixing the robot between matches) to be on the drive team? This can often be a conflict as teams want to discuss strategy before the match, when you may need to be fixing something.
- Do you want to see a certain level of commitment (meeting attendance %) from your drivers?
- Do you want to limit your drivers to only upperclassmen, since they won't have a chance to drive after they graduate, or go with the best, even if it's a freshman?
- Do you want to have some general behavior guidelines in place, allowing the team leaders to deny the spot to someone who tends to act inappropriately or get angry easily (remember, the drivers are a large part of the team's public image)?

Once that's out of the way, Figure out how you're going to select from the pool of potential drivers. Is it reasonable to have a game-related driving test? This year, for example, you could time each potential driver as they score a logo, and the person with the quickest time might be the best option. You could also set up an obstacle course they have to maneuver the robot through, again a timed event. If you have a practice robot, or one working from previous years, you can have them go up against that robot playing an opposing role (defense or offense, depending on your team's design/strategy in each particular year) with some timed goal - scoring a tube, or just getting past them.

Run your test(s) multiple times per person so they form an average performance - you can even plot out the data points in excel, show standard deviation, all sorts of fun stuff. By having these solid data points, you remove any subjective feelings and impressions from the process, and hopefully avoid any drama from the selection (of the sort "he got chosen for the drive team because the mentor likes him the best, but I'm a better driver").

This past year, we ran a trial like this before our first competition, and the results were very clear - we had several people who all had around the same time, with similar standard deviations, and one person who had a much better time with a much smaller standard deviation. She ended up being the driver, and did a fantastic job (earning us a spot at Champs for the first time in team history).