Tank Drive Car

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by James Critchley

Have any teams looked at user interface studies on "tank drive"? Our results from an early season test this year showed that independent up-down and left-right (axis 1 and 3) on a PlayStation style Logitech game pad was twice as fast for combined gross and precision movements. Our study involved at least 5 untrained users (users unfamiliar with the platform, not unfamiliar with various control methods) and the results were consistently half the time, even for those asking for "tank steer". Why is "tank steer" so popular?

Waaayyyy back when I was the drive coach on my old team, we did a study that showed that drivers all did better with "arcade drive" than with "tank drive" (then weren't known as that back then). On that team, we forbode "tank drive" after that.

I've been wanting to go to independent fore/aft left/right for years. We finally did it this year, but NOT with two sticks. We use one stick for the fore/aft and a spring-loaded knob for the rotational movement of the robot. This setup was extremely intuitive the drive, and it even eliminates the "turning in the opposite direction while the robot is facing you" problem with a stick. I'm thinking we'll stick with this configuration for a while.