[Kit Gerhart]

I was heavily involved in the driver testing for most of my years with TechnoKats and we did several things, among them:

1) Have the candidates drive the robot for time around a course of cones. If you have a fairly fast robot, or one with gear change which is fast in high gear, this seems to be a valuable test.

2) Have the prospective drivers do things that you would do in real matches, again for time and precision. In 2001, we tested the drivers' ability to get the two goals and balance on the ramp. In '98, we tested both driver and operator for ability to do their respective jobs as would be done in matches. That year, I drove while testing operators, and Jeff Burch operated while testing drivers. I am very convinced that we ended up with the best driver and operator that year.

3) Give written tests on the rules of the game. This can be very important.

4) While testing drivers at you home base, encourage heckling and noise making by spectators to the testing. It is noisy, and the pressure is high during matches, so it makes sense to have distractions while testing (IMHO)

5) You always have to watch for the little things when evaluating drivers. A stop watch will tell you a lot, but if you have been around it, you can detect real skill when you see it, and sometimes the stop watch doesn't tell the whole story.

The use of R/C cars has been mentioned in several posts to this thread, and it should be valuable for learning to stay oriented when going in various directions and coming toward you. The steering wheel/finger throttle of an R/C car is certainly different from the way most of our robots are driven, but for learning orientation, driving the cars should be of benefit for teams which don't yet have a robot to drive.

All of what I have said is some of my opinion on driver and operator selection if you goal is to have the best drive team for winning matches. There are certainly other philosophies, including letting students drive who have "earned" the position, and there is merit to that. That can be a "tie breaker" with the TK team if there is no obvious "best" driver candidate.

While there are several students on every team who would like to be driver, operator, and human player, not everyone can have these positions and one of the most important jobs of all is to do the selection fairly so you avoid peoples' feeling being hurt.