WHEN to choose drive teams

When do you think is the best time to choose drivers? Our mentors are putting it off, and if we put it on any longer our drivers won't be able to drive the robot.

For future reference, when is a good time to pick drive teams, and what are the advantages of picking them at that time?

Thanks!

[JosephC]

A few days after you finish your practice chassis (if you make one). This gives anyone who wants to be on the drive team a chance to drive the robot, then hold driver tryouts in order to maximize your driving practice.

Of course, this is only how I feel, doesn't mean it's the best way.

[jblay]

We used to go by the stupid route of saying we will try them out when the robot is done and then in the end just appoint the 2 most important engineers on the team to drive.

The last few years we have done tryouts at an off-season event. I highly recommend this route, you can really see how people respond to pressure. We alternate every year which position we try out trying out only juniors and sophomores or freshman and sophomores depending on which part of the off-season in which the event takes place. While we tryout the new driver we have the driver entering his or her second year of driving draw along side all of the people trying out. The one pitfall is that you don't perform as well at off-season events.

[rcmolloy]

For this upcoming season, we really focused on a few factors when it came to our drive team prospects during the off-season. These factors included driving ability, how well the individual communicates and follows directions, the participation that the student has contributed, and overall the attitude of the person. All of these factors go into effect during the drive practice days as well as events. We really try to focus down to a few students to choose from for our drive team. When it came down to it, we really knew our driver before the beginning of the season. As for the co-driver, the same factors are taken but are not as stressed as the driver position. Since it takes an individual time to learn new function mappings each year, it really depends on which person is most suitable to change and can "manipulate" the robot well.

The only necessary area that 973 has to focus on in the next few weeks is human player. Even though there are the handful of kids that had participated during the off-season events, they are competing in a completely new environment. Therefore, we really need to focus on the students that qualify above to the factors beside driver ability and add in competitive ability/advantage.

Summing up the discussion, we choose our driver early on and focus mainly on the abilities of the co-driver and human player along with how well the individuals other factors added into the mix.

As for a new team/any team that does not have a drive team yet, use the previous statements above and get working on that NOW if you have not done so. 973 is blessed with the resources that we are allotted and have time with our practice resources and if you are a team without that luxury many people, like myself, would advise getting as much time in as possible.

[Garrett.d.w]

We use offseason events to hone the skills of those who want to drive. Actual drive teams just sort of happen, like many things on a small team .
On a serious note, our drive teams are chosen based on their skill and specific skill set (eg, last year we had our lead builder, lead programmer and lead designer on the drive team). This way they can do more than just drive the robot.

[jwfoss]

On FRC2168, we start training potential drivers when they are freshman, and we typically will not have them drive at official competitions until they are a junior. This typically means that at any one time we are training around 6-8 drivers.

This year our drive team is returning from last year as they are both now seniors.

We take driver selection and training fairly seriously as we believe a robot will only perform as well as the drivers at the controls.

[Zuelu562]

As a really small team (5-7 students, 4-5 technical mentors), our drive team is realistically whoever wants to. As the coach, I plan to have the veteran drive and give him his own practice time, but give the other members of the drive team practice time, to get used to the controls and because one of them will be operating our shooter.

Determining WHEN to choose your drive team is really down to how your own team operates; on my previous team, we chose drivers within the week or two before competition 3 out of the 4 years, but the team was always behind on robot construction and had at least 15 student members. With 3623, being a smaller team, it's a lot easier to "thin the herd" of potential driving staff, and we've only got to decide who's operating the shooter and who's going to be the human player.

[AlexJamesCross]

well in our team the Captin gets to drive(engenieer) and we have the co captin(the programmer) operate the arm and what not. We do this because they have the most experience and we let all the others(like me at Brunswick) drive/operate the robot in offseason so they can get practice.

[DampRobot]

We basically select two people from mechanics and one programmer to be on the drive team. The logic to this is that the programmer can try to do something if the robot is not working during the match, and the mechanics guys know how not to break it.

The people chosen to do drive team are usually the people that have put in the most time. They know the robot and the code best. We can usually tell who will be on the drive team before the robot is even built, because they are made obvious through their dedication.

I would caution you on doing some sort of try outs, especially without investing a lot of practice time in the people who are chosen to drive. For an off season competition, we chose to have someone new drive, and had tryouts to select the lucky freshman. We preformed terribly at that competition, largely because the person selected seemed to have gotten lucky at the "tryouts" and not practiced with the robot since.

I would caution you on relying solely on driver tryouts to chose drive teams. Dedication to the team and practice time on the robot is, in my mind, worth far more than minimal skill or getting lucky. Even if someone is a naturally gifted driver, they need to put in the time and effort to be really effective. That said, I would recommend choosing one drive team as soon as it is feasible to begin practicing.