[generalbrando]

My thinking exactly. Back in Hammond I was backup driver to the awesome Kevin (bow). Even as backup I drove many many hours and now I can still drive well enough to make it look easy.

My team this past year only got about....an hour? We didn't have time to drive it much considering it didn't move until week 4 or 5 (next year will be better!).

Another thought was that when doing demonstrations, it's great to reel people in by letting them drive a little. Usually they fly all over and get nervous and it gets worse. Compensations like this should help that.

Another simple improvement I tried out - find the absolute value of the difference between the two sticks. If it's less than a specified constant (let's say 15) then average the sticks and send that out to the motors. That way when they are very close to the same value, the robot will in face drive forward.