[Amit3339]

Originally Posted by Ryan_Todd

To the best of my knowledge, Lightning Robotics has never fielded a single-driver robot in our 15 years of existence:

FIRST is about the Inspiration, after all, and limiting the drive team to a single student-- especially if your reason is to avoid the valuable learning experience of working closely with your peers in a high-pressure environment-- strikes me as a rather uninspiring policy to have.

...With that said, we usually divide the labor as follows:

"Driver"

• All drivetrain, all day!
• Closely related subsystems (like ramps/wedges, whose entire purpose is to help the robot to navigate the field obstacles) are sometimes bundled in as well.
• Interface is always composed of full-sized joysticks (one or two, depending on the style of drivetrain).
  • I don't care how much of a hardcore gamer you may be; a thumb stick on a hand-held game pad will never offer the kind of fine-grained control that you want for an FRC drivetrain, period.
• Above all else, we depend on the driver for consistency; on top of the usual selection requirements of driving skill and cooperative attitude, the ideal driver is completely impervious to pressure and distraction when they are "in the zone" during a competition match.

"Co-pilot"

• Controls everything else: arm, intake, shooter, what-have-you.
• Back in the days of serial ports, the co-pilot's interface usedto be custom-made: an array of knobs and buttons chosen specifically for that year's subsystems.
  • These days, we usually just give the co-pilot a handheld game pad and a printout of the button mappings.
• The co-pilot is expected to multi-task like a champion, managing several subsystems simultaneously; they must also exhibit exceptional adaptability, in order to cope with mechanism failures and [s]improvements[/s] changes made by the programming team in between matches.

"Drive Coach"

• Pretty much self-explanatory...
• Studies the large-scale goings-on around the field, and issues high-level commands to the drive team. Examples...
  • If the clock is running out: "One more shot, make it count!"
  • If we're defending against a powerhouse: "Hold 'em for 3... 2... 1... back!"
  • If we're crossing a defense, boulder in tow: "Batter shot, left side!"
  • If an ally gets stuck on a boulder: "Hey ####! You need help?"
    (And if the answer is yes) "Ok! After this shot, we go help ####."
• Selection criteria: preferably an alumnus with competition driving experience. Alternatively, someone with experience coaching or refereeing any sport will also do nicely.

Good explanation to how the roles are divided(usually). I have noticed that many teams don't use the drive coach as you mentioned, they let the drivers be "free" with their action and are gettin involved only when there is a certain unwanted situation. But again... every team have different methods. It's also depends on what drivers do you have? Do they like to be told what to do step by step and so on