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Unread 24-06-2002, 00:02
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#0047 (ChiefDelphi)
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Pontiac, MI
Posts: 21,214
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one more thing to look for

Posted by Joe Ross at 2/2/2001 2:14 AM EST


Engineer on team #330, Beach Bot, from Hope Chapel Academy and NASA/JPL , J&F Machine, and Raytheon.


In Reply to: The (new) WPI way...
Posted by colleen - T190 on 2/2/2001 1:20 AM EST:



Colleen has some very good ideas. I can only think of one more thing to add. It is imperative that your drivers don't get distracted easily and take pressure well.

On the field (for those who haven't experienced it) it is very noisy and there are many things going on. Your drivers must be able to focus on the task at hand and not get easily distracted. On the other hand, he/she can't totally block everything out. they must be able to listen to the coach at the same time.

They must also respond well to pressure. I'm sure you have all seen people who fold when under pressure. On the field there is a tremendous amount of pressure. They must be able to work around adversity also. For example, if a ball is stuck under the bridge, do they stop and wait for another team to take care of it, or wait for instructions from the coach? They should take an active role, either by moving to remove the ball or informing the coach so that he can communicate to the other teams that there is a ball to be removed.

Two more things that we have found to be beneficial. The drivers and coach(es) should know each other very well, and have practiced together a lot. For the past three years, our driving team has been two brothers and their father as a coach. I could have easily counted the number of words they spoke on my fingers. It wasn't necessary. They were able to anticipate each other's actions and as a result we have had many compliments about how good our drivers are. It isn't very likely that you will find yourself in that type of situation, but it is something to keep in mind. The more that drivers drive together (or even play video games together) the better they will be at working together.

Lastly, like colleen said, your drivers should be very knowledgable about not only what the robot does, but how it feels when it does certain things. In "double trouble" we lost a match because the driver didn't tell us that the robot was handling quite right. Thursday night we had our first qualifying match and our job was to grab a few floppys, push the puck to the other side and get on the puck. We used four motors to drive four wheels that year and during that match one of the motors started to drag. It wasn't obvious to anyone but the driver. But, he didn't tell anyone that it was acting a little strange. In our next match, the motor was completely dead, and although we could still drive, it was hard to do much. If we had known about the problem earlier, then we would have been able to fix the problem (a bad tekin speed controller) and probably would have won that next match. If your driver's don't know what the robot feels like, then they won't have any way of telling you if the robot is acting OK.

I hope I haven't bored you to pieces :-)


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