Good vs. Great Drive Teams

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by mr.roboto2826

I myself was a driver for three years, its best to let the drivers pick what they want to use, and not just use something that you think will work for them.

I totally agree. This past year was my first year as the primary driver and I got to create the driver station and setup for our machine. The controls were very intuitive because I had the ability to select what controls I wanted.

PS: I think the difference between good and great is just in the details. (Almost) Anyone can operate a robot but it's the great ones that spend hours refining their skills and abilities. Also trying to be innovative helps. We learned it was much more efficient to hang our tubes in a backwards orientation rather than turning around every time.

[R1ffSurf3r]

confidence not arrogance

[Mike Starke]

Obviously, the more practice you can get the better anyone will perform.
But...

I was on drive team for two years back in 2006-2007. And something that I noticed between the two years is that the most qualified people were not on the drive team, including myself. However, what in my opinion was more important, is that we worked EXTREMELY well together. We had each others backs and we never second guessed each others decesions to what they did on the field. We were team players.
A bickering drive team, who may be more "qualified", will be less effective than that of a team who can effectively drive (may not be the best on the team) but who is a people person and can work well with others.

There have been several kids on our team who have expressed an interest in driving the robot, but factors such as, a hot temper, and not working well with others, hurts their chance at the drive team. Think about alliances and working with other teams- those 4 people on your drive team are sometimes the only image of your team that other people get.

So I think there's a balance between the most qualified people- and people that will work well together, and drive as a TEAM.

I agree with most of what has been said so far.

Rules: Very important.

Practice: Very important.

The dedication to spend hours sitting in front of a blank TV with your Playstation controller pretending you are driving: Priceless.

Back to the subject, I read somewhere that drivers/operators are born, not made, and I half agree with that. I'm not saying no one can be a driver because of skill. Skill is something you can usually obtain through lots of practice, but then again we all can practice. What I agree with is that some people have certain qualities that make them better candidates than the others. Working well with others, being graciously professional, and working with an alliance using scouting info are all examples of quality traits that need to be present in a driver. The only problem is, not everyone has those traits. Driver qualities are not something that can be learned. You can practice with the robot all you want, but that won't make you a better communicator with your team.

My final words: While everyone can be a driver, not everyone should.

[theprgramerdude]

In my experience, unless the arena is at a moderate volume (read: never), the captain rarely can do anything to easily communicate with the two drivers unless they were wearing headsets with noise-cancelling headphones (idea?).

The two drivers on a good drive team work well together, and most importantly, work well under the pressure of only two minutes of performance. OK drivers can move the robot smoothly, but lose sight of the whole arena easily when focusing on getting good control and motion of the robot to it's destination. Good drivers should be able to do this and be capable of analyzing the game at the same time.

Great drive teams, in my opinion, are essentially made of three people: two are the good drivers. The third is the robot software. Humans are great analysts at controlling robots, and learn smooth movements extremely fast, but their reaction time and precision can easily be beat by the Crio commanding certain executions with input from sensors located on the robot. In this way, the two drivers are really the captains of the machine, and the Crio drives. Results may vary when in a transition from good to great. There's going to be a hard limit on what a person can do while driving; if you want a better machine driver, just throw on more technology and better code.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

In my experience, unless the arena is at a moderate volume (read: never)...

Because of this, when we practice, we usually do so while blasting really loud music right behind the drivers. Our drivers say it's a great help to learn to tune out loud noises before the competition.

[theprgramerdude]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

Because of this, when we practice, we usually do so while blasting really loud music right behind the drivers. Our drivers say it's a great help to learn to tune out loud noises before the competition.

Smart idea; do they then manage to understand the captain through the volume at competition, or is it still hopeless?

[GCentola]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

Smart idea; do they then manage to understand the captain through the volume at competition, or is it still hopeless?

We did the same thing. It got us used to tuning out the music, and it gave me an idea of how loud I have to be as a coach. Definitely not hopeless!! And it made practice more fun!

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

Smart idea; do they then manage to understand the captain through the volume at competition, or is it still hopeless?

Having been both a driver and a coach, I know that good voice control and a plan before-hand works. I don't remember any matches where I couldn't hear my coach/my drivers told me they couldn't hear me.

Maybe add that skill to the list:
Ability to tune out unnecessary noise and tune in to their coach.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

Smart idea; do they then manage to understand the captain through the volume at competition, or is it still hopeless?

They better. The coach better project. Yell is probably the wrong word, as it's not a talk down necessarily but it sounds a lot like that.

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

Because of this, when we practice, we usually do so while blasting really loud music right behind the drivers. Our drivers say it's a great help to learn to tune out loud noises before the competition.

I like it! Though we sometimes practice in the school's library, so I don't think the librarians would like it if we "blasted music". :\

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude

Smart idea; do they then manage to understand the captain through the volume at competition, or is it still hopeless?

Not being a driver myself, I can't say from experience, but our drivers have said that practising with music helps a lot. I would assume that they just get good at yelling really loudly, which makes it less hopeless. But every little edge counts...

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

They better. The coach better project. Yell is probably the wrong word, as it's not a talk down necessarily but it sounds a lot like that.

For me it depends on the driver. If they can take and prefer my yelling, I yell. If they'd rather me talk in a strong voice and closer to their ear, I do that. Some people don't respond to yelling under pressure and you can shoot yourself in the foot.

One thing I've found my self doing a lot more of is pointing. When I point, I make sure to put my hand as close to the glass as possible so that the driver can see where I'm pointing without looking out of the way.

[ks_mumupsi]

After coaching for 3 years and seeing how having 2 coaches in the same season impacts the team.. I have a few things to add

im surprised this hasnt been mentioned yet or maybe i just missed it.
consistency in language.... if your drive team thinks you are saying something and you mean something different thats tough. You need ot build that communication during practice. You need to focus on the small details in practice. If you say arm up/down or in-out it can mean different things to different people. Getting clear communication across the team is very important.

I think the second thing is the driver and operator need to understand each other without having to talk. There is not enough time to communicate what you need to be doing on the field, it needs to be intuitive.

Third is the control system.. We focused this year on building as intuitive a control system for the operator as possible, so that it was never a question for the operator of how high/low the arm needed to be or so.

Alot of the other things everyone has mentioned already. I will add to practice, practice against other robots, we try to run a previous years bot playing defense and the current years robot to get the drivers used to have other robots and obstacles on the field. That unknown variable of not knowing what the other team will do is very important in practice. practice in ideal settings doesnt help too much. This is why teams get better as competitions progress they start building an idea of what the other team will likely do.

hopefully that helps..

While I say over 70% of the robot performance is driver skill, I say about the other 30% is about robot design. While more advanced robots won't make the drivers better, they will surely allow for easier control and less needed input from the drivers.

For example, imagine driving one of the advanced 2009 robots without the carious traction control algorithms teams programmed. Or if your team used vision to track the targets on top of the goals for targeted shots in 2010, it would be a lot easier to have your robot use its sensors to align itself, and use the distance away from the target to change the kicking power to ensure that every time you press the fire button, you get a for sure shot in the goal.

Smarter robots make a more fluid driving experience and make your robot, overall, more effective.