What is the best robot-operating setup you can think of?

[Andy A.]

I drove using a single stick for tank steered robots. I always thought it was a fine way to get the job done.

This past season the students found they preferred using a stick with rudder twist to control turn rate, and the Y axis for speed. I still can't drive it that way, but thankfully the coaches don't have to drive.

For off season driving we crammed all the functions onto a Xboxish controller. It's allowed us to do a lot of interesting things, and it's not nearly as terrible as I had anticipated. While I still have reservations about the thumb sticks vs a full size stick, I'm open to considering it.