Driving: Tank, Arcade or FPS?

[MrForbes]

This morning, before our programming mentor arrived, I suggested to some of the students that they see if they could get the robot running by themselves, and play around with it. After a while we got to discussing how to control it, whether to use tank drive, or arcade drive, with a game pad, or a joystick. A couple of them described the typical video game setup, where one joystick on a gamepad is used for turning, the other for forward/back. Something about "first person shooter". Anyways, after a while (and after the programming mentor arrived), they got it figured out, and now have FPS control of the robot...several students tried it, and were quite pleased with how easy it is to drive now.

I wonder, why it took us so long to figure this out?

[thatprogrammer]

Cheesy Drive is based off of this. Ask 254 for more info :-)

[Gregor]

We refer to this as split arcade drive, and absolulty love it. Once you try it you'll never go back. We use it exclusively when we use skid steer drivetrains.

[Jay O'Donnell]

It's really a driver preference thing. I've always preferred tank, but I know other drivers prefer different setups.

[IronicDeadBird]

Anyone have experience with GTA style?

[z_beeblebrox]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Anyone have experience with GTA style?

Can you clarify what that means?

[Ether]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Can you clarify what that means?

Grand Theft Auto?

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Can you clarify what that means?

Sorry I got side tracked.
It would be button inputs dictate direction freeing up the full range of a joystick to setting the percent or throttle

[Ether]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Sorry I got side tracked.
It would be button inputs dictate direction

What does "dictate direction" mean? Could you please describe in more detail?

e.g :

while ButtonX is pushed bot rotates at rateX?

push and release ButtonX, bot rotates at rateX until another button is pushed?

push and release ButtonX, bot rotates Xdegrees from where it was?

push and release ButtonX, bot rotates to field-oriented headingX?

etc etc etc

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by Ether

What does "dictate direction" mean? Could you please describe in more detail?

So in a standard WCD set left trigger to forward and right trigger to reverse essentially like shifting in a car. Then using a joystick or dial to adjust the speed you are going
eh ill just include an image.

[I_AM_Clayton]

I think we're going with a simple tank drive using the now pointless omni wheels and using an Xbox controller. Anyone else think that this will be the first year mecanums will be on Einstein? I feel like good maneuverability is one of the main keys to being successful in this years game.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by I_AM_Clayton

Anyone else think that this will be the first year mecanums will be on Einstein?

A lot of people do.

[JABot67]

RC Car Drive:
Left thumb Y axis gets mapped to ArcadeDrive forward-backward
Right thumb X axis gets mapped to ArcadeDrive turning



This drive control scheme is the only scheme that has been used by any of the teams I have been on, from 2007 to 2015. It gives the driver an absolutely guaranteed way of driving straight forward and back, and no other drive scheme mentioned here comes close. It also allows the driver to turn on a dime, with no forward-to-backward movement if none is required - useful when you don't have that much room.

One thing my team noticed in 2012 was that teams who used two-stick tank or one-stick arcade drive were struggling to balance the bridge. Thinking about it, it makes sense - when you are trying to drive slowly forward or backward with one of those drives, you may end up inadvertently turning.

This thread really should be a poll - I think RC car drive is actually a very popular drive (and is also by far my favorite! )

With mecanum and slide and swerve drive, different drive schemes have to be used. I would probably recommend the First-Person Shooter drive, using the free axis of the forward-backward stick to strafe.

[FTC5110]

In FTC and VEX land we run split arcade but for holonomic drives, to keep the driving controls mostly the same regardless of drive system, we add a fairly large deadband on the LH joystick X value so Y being forward/backward is "preferred" and left/right movement is available when required plus RH joystick X value for rotate allows for some fun driving.
This scheme in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGWg43TtCI

Might be handy since it's looking like FRC will have many holonomic drives this season.

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by Gregor

We refer to this as split arcade drive, and absolulty love it. Once you try it you'll never go back. We use it exclusively when we use skid steer drivetrains.

Oddly enough, we call it the Kaj drive, since I believe that it was Kaj from 188 that introduced it to us.