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#1
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Driver Selection: A Discussion
Hey CD,
So whenever I meet up with a certain FIRSTer, he and I have numerous conversations about various aspects of FRC Teams. One of our more interesting conversations revolve around the topic of driver selection. We have streamlined driver selections to two sections: -Skill (This includes ability with the joysticks as well as mental ability) -Reward (This is our blunt way of describing when teams give it to the most dedicated students/senior students/etc.) Some argue that drivers should be picked solely on skill, while others think that there should be a reward aspect to driving. One scenario that's been brought up is a hypothetical team who has two students who, from day one, know they want to be drivers. The students obtain small remote controlled vehicles with a drive-base similar to that of the teams and play a new game everyday with the vehicles. This is all they do at the meetings. This fine-tuns both their skills with the joysticks as well as their driving-mentality. Should they get the drive team positions? One can argue that they should as they are the most qualified based on their skill. Another can argue that they should not, as they have not done the work to reap the 'benefits' of being on the drive team. Opinions? Thoughts? (The hypothetical situation does not need to be referenced) |
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#2
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
I would prefer my driver to be knowledgeable about the game, strategy-minded, and coachable. An outstanding, if overlooked, quality of a great driver is the ability to do exactly as told, when told, without second-guessing. Robot driving is not the place for ego or bravado. The person can be the best driver in the world, but when the penalties add up due to lack of robot and game knowledge or communication skills, it's no good.
This scenario strongly suggests that the prospective drivers are headstrong and cocky, not what I'm looking for. Edit: A key skill that drivers need is the ability to diagnose problems. If the drivers have little to no interaction with the design and construction of the actual robot and its subsystems, then when (not if) catastrophes occur, the driver cannot provide insightful, useful information. Last edited by Taylor : 17-06-2011 at 17:40. Reason: another reason to go with the dedicated team member |
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#3
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
Personally I think a combination of both skill and team dedication are required. So the most dedicated and skilled members should drive. My 2 cents.
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#4
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
Formula SAE runs into a lot of the same issues. It is my teams mentality that only involved members are going to be driving the car at competition. This is because they know the systems well, and they put in the bulk of the work (plus they will not abuse the car in our endurance event
). It is a competition between involved members, but I can't see FIRST getting the desired effect out of a dedicated robot driver who doesn't do anything else on the robot. It could happen, just don't think its likely. |
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#5
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
I personally think its not so much how much skill a drivers has but can the driver develop skills. Our team is really dead set to try to do some form of a practice robot next year, even if its just 50 percent of the competition robot. We had hardly any practice time this year, even the most skillful drivers need practice time to get used to the robot.
With that train of thought, I am more inclined to pick a driver as a reward. A dedicated student will be willing take the extra time to practice, with a practice or past year's robot. Plus a dedicated student usually is well versed in the strategy and the construction of the robot (very helpful for pin pointing problems). Other things I look for is ability to work well with others, follow instructions, handles criticism gracefully, is cool under pressure and competitive drive. I tell my students, that being the driver is not glamorous. It a stressful job that requires a lot of extra hours. One can't casually want to be a driver, nor can one want it for the title. One has to put in the extra effort and show me that I can count on them to help the team no matter what (well within reason). Last edited by Mark Sheridan : 17-06-2011 at 16:14. |
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#6
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
I'll make a large post about this soon. I would just like to state that this is the same as any other competition. This is just a major question to contemplate.
Do the people down on the floor want to be there during finals knowing that they need to do an x amount of things to win or they will lose? Yes dedication and skill do come down to driving, however, the people who want to be driving the most and make that shown should be handed the opportunity. |
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#7
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
What we usually do is have our drivers practice a lot, but also help in the following areas:
1. Drive Train/Attachment building - Depending on whether they control the drive or the attachments 2. Programming/Pseudo Coding for part they control 3. Strategy team - works with coach and mentors 4. RULE READING - Similar to strategy, our drivers must know the rules. All of them. 5. Extra things that vary year to year - Sometimes the endgame This is just what we do, but it helps our drivers know what they're working with, and how it works. |
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#8
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
Our drivers are chosen based on several criteria. They have to have put in the time duing the building, so that they are very knowlegable about the robot and the programming. This gives them the insight to be able to quickly troubleshoot problems. They have to demonstrate their knowledge of the rules by taking a test, which minimizes the number of penalties against us. They have to have good driving abilities, often from practicing with robots or from experience with remote control airplanes and ground vehicles. Finally, they have to be able to handle the stress of driving, which is extremely difficult if everything isn't going well.
I hate it when parents come up to me and complain that their kid should be driving... |
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#9
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
There are dozens of factors that go into choosing drivers, I feel. To have the best drivers for your team, I think you have to carefully consider a lot.
First, the team member in question must be a dedicated member of the team. If the member in question has priorities other than FRC that trump competitions, they can't be given the driver's position, because if another obligation comes up, you may become sans-driver for a competition. Second, ideally, I think, drivers should have a working knowledge of the robot, so that he/she may help to diagnose problems on the fly, as well as work with programmers, designers, and builders to create a robot that works seamlessly with the requirements of the game and the driver's preferences Another important factor for driver selection is workability and chemistry. If your team uses two drivers for the robot, those two must be able to work well together. If they do not communicate well, you're looking at a disaster waiting to happen. Drivers also should be obedient yet intelligent. Drivers should be able to follow instructions without hesitation, but must also be aware enough to challenge an instruction when needed. Obviously, with all of these things in mind, the driver must also have skill, or at least potential. If a driver is nervous and inconsistent behind the controls, he/she may not be a good fit. If he or she improves a bit then hits a plateau that doesn't quite take full advantage of the robot's capabilities, he/she may not be a good fit. The ideal driver can correct his/her little errors quickly and independently, is willing to listen to and carefully consider criticism, and can and will improve throughout the season. So, I don't think that the situation can ever be quite as simple as the original post implies, but to answer the question: I think that dedicated students should be rewarded in some way, but, at the same time, if a student is not a good fit for the driver's position, then a different reward can probably be determined. The goal of competing on the field is, honestly, to win competitions. As such, a driver behind the controls should be a mean to that end, just not a position won as a prize. |
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#10
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
I believe it should be based on skill, but there is no way a driver can have the skills required without helping build the robot.
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#11
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
In theory the ideal driver doesn't even need a coach. They're so masterful that they have the strategy covered as well. Good luck finding or creating that driver.
I'm not sure if I was trying to pull that stunt when I was driving a robot, years ago. We had a combination of a first-year university student mentor as coach, and me as driver—and although we got along excellently, I'm really not sure how accurately I reacted to his coaching suggestions. (Then again, maybe he was so good at planting suggestions that he didn't need to explain anything. I really wasn't consciously paying attention to him...which is something I wouldn't advise under ordinary circumstances.) Most of the time it worked, but there were a couple of tactically-excellent, but strategically-unfortunate decisions that would have benefitted from a more refined coach-driver relationship (like pushing an opponent's robot 50 feet across the field, including up and over a big ramp, kicking and screaming...and getting pushed most of the way back when once our battery voltage dropped low enough to reboot the robot controller ).An interesting side effect of that particular robot was that the function operator (i.e. driver #2) had very little to do. From a controllability point of view, it probably would have been better just to give full control to one driver. But on the team at the time, being a driver was also a prestige position, and that fact (combined with some implementation details of the controls) made it impractical to design the interface around a single driver and leave the other driver with literally nothing to drive. Desirable though it might be to share the prestige and responsibility among two people, I think a team needs to be ready to hand off complete robot control to a single person, so that there's one less brain in the loop trying to make the robot do stuff, and one more set of eyes watching the field and manipulating game pieces (when possible). And if the drivers can't calculate strategy on the fly as well as a dedicated coach (and especially given the calibre of coaching available to some teams, the drivers very often can't), then the coach needs to be assertive enough to be noticed, competent enough to understand each game on the fly, and consistent enough to avoid ambiguity and communicate nuances seamlessly. Practice makes this work. (In my days as a student, we never had enough time to practice with a working robot.) Similarly, making the coach a prestige position doesn't really work. I tried coaching once; I wasn't great at it. Firstly, I was coaching my brother as driver—so what were the odds he'd listen to me unquestioningly? Secondly, I'd been primarily involved with the technical development of the robot—so I was always on call to help fix robot issues. We didn't really have a dedicated strategy team at the time, so I didn't have the benefit of other peoples' research into what the opponents were doing, or even the background knowledge to choose what the strategy should have been for the next match. The coach and the drivers need to be on top of the strategy from the start. That's what they'll be applying throughout the match, so it makes sense for them to dedicate their energies at events to that task alone. Don't let the pit crew drive. You need them to make sure the robot is functional at all times. Despite that rigid separation of roles, there needs to be some cross-training of skills. The pit crew needs to understand strategy to prioritize repairs—what can we do without next match? The drivers and coach need to understand robot operation at a technical level, so that they can perceive malfunctions, and don't try to make the robot do unrealistic things. Rewarding excellence is important, and since your most skilled students probably deserve recognition for that attribute, you'd make them very happy by letting them take the prestigious role of driver. So in a roundabout way, driving can be a prestige position without harming performance. But that only works if the all-around skill is there—mastery of strategy by early in build season, mastery of driving toward the end of the build season, and competence in terms of understanding robot performance and failure modes. |
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#12
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
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#13
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
Here's how I do it.
First I look for potential. Driving takes quick decision making and the ability to fluidly make decisions. Students who do best during "crunch time" robot repairs, stressful situations, and build arguments are favored for driving the robot. You don't want someone passive, but you want someone who can stay calm and filter out distractions. On top of that, maturity is very helpful. We don't really have big maturity problems on the team, but mature and responsible drivers are a must. Students that really understand that the team is placing the robot literally in their hands. Then I look at natural talent. This is much less of a big deal as it might seem, but since my team does not have as much drive time to really polish a driver, students who have experience driving things like RC cars, RC airplanes, Vex robots, etc. are favored initially. At this point, it's determined by who puts more dedication into early drive practice. Day before Kickoff is the final selection. |
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#14
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
Quote:
Quote:
I've told my coach before, it's like, I am miles away from needing a coach to play the game - me and my friend are more than good enough to find and pick up a tube, you don't need to tell us that. What I need are time updates and strategy updates. If something changes, then that is something I will probably not know on my own. Quote:
In my case, I helped program a lot of the robot, so if I didn't like how it was driving or if I felt it was turning too fast or something I would just go ahead and change the value that would give me what I wanted, as opposed to trying to explain what the problem was and having everyone involved scratch their head for ten minutes before it got fixed. Just little things like this are extremely important. ______________ As for rewards now, I absolutely hate the notion of giving it to Seniors just because they have "earned it." It's an absolutely ridiculous notion - drive team is all about skill and the ability to think quickly and under pressure, not whoever has been on the team the longest. The two drivers this year were myself (a junior) on the drivetrain and my friend (a sophomore) on the elevator/manipulator. This is better than just giving it to seniors (who it was very clear were far worse than my friend and I, even they admitted it) particularly because now I have an extra year of practice and my friend will have two by the time he is a senior. Last edited by Warlord : 19-06-2011 at 14:43. |
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#15
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Re: Driver Selection: A Discussion
Quote:
It's easy to discount the seniority card when you don't have it, and very easy to use when you do. ![]() |
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