Drills

[lemiant]

How do you keep drivers interested while developing their skills?

[JamesCH95]

Competition and a goal to work towards.

We do a number of driving drills, including a bridge balancing drill, to see who gets the fastest time. Usually a couple of coaches try it first so that they can give good advice and so that we set a fast time for the drill (myself and another coach drove when we were students, so we're pretty good).

Our chassis driver started off doing a bridge-balancing drill in about 30s, then got it down to 11s, beating the best coach-driven time of 13s.

[Bongle]

In the rare cases the robot is all in one piece before ship (and not getting upgraded after being in one piece for 5 minutes), we usually set up a mini obstacle course.

Something like:
-Drive here, acquire the ball
-Drive around this marker, then shoot the ball
-Then do the same thing backwards
-Then park the robot in a challenging spot

It has a well-defined beginning and end, and so you can time it and make a mini-competition, which keeps people interested.

[IndySam]

Our main drills this year were

#1 8 balls available (4 on the two bridges) how many points could be scored in a timed match. The high score was 62

#2 8 balls available, the six not on the robot were on the other side of the barrier, how many points could be scored in a timed match. The high score was 52

#3 6 balls available 4 were under a bridge or in a corner. I don't recall the high score on that one.

[Jack Jones]

Originally Posted by lemiant

How do you keep drivers interested while developing their skills?

If I were you, I'd try new drivers. Ones who are naturally interested in developing their skills.

[Ryan Caldwell]

We cycle which auton we start with and then have 2 balls available on co-op bridge and 2 on the alliance bridge, the other 3 are with our inbounder. total of 9 balls.

we run an all offensive drill balancing at the last 15s (gather shoot)

we run an assistance drill lowering the alliance bridge at a predetermined time for 10s and then continuing to score and coming back to push our 2011 robot carcass up on the alliance bridge for the double at 20s

we ran defense drills of putting robot carcasses and cones all over the defensive zone pick up balls clear them to offensive zone don't touch anything other than the field elements then balance at 15s

mentors will also randomly get in the way pushing old robots in the way, kicking the bumpers at the fender, we also fain failures(you can't adjust the shooter angle for the rest of the match or the turret cannot be adjusted the rest of the match)

this has done wonders for our drive team:
we put up avg6 in auton and 8 points teleop at week 0, 20-30sec to balance

now we avg10 in auton and 18 points teleop at week 6
our driver now typically balances 5-10 sec (initial contact with bridge or robot carcass)

try to switch it up allot and if its an issue getting your drivers to show up...get new drivers

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Our chassis driver started off doing a bridge-balancing drill in about 30s, then got it down to 11s, beating the best coach-driven time of 13s.

I was robbed, I tell you. I still own the figure eight, at least.